JIM JENKINS: You're never too old to have a firefighter for a hero

EDITOR'S NOTE: Jim Jenkins is a retired editor and columnist on The News & Observer of Raleigh's editorial page.

Yes, most of us — mostly boys then, I guess, in the 1950s — had a plastic fire helmet and a little yellow jacket at some point or other in our pre- and even post-elementary years, a group now thankfully expanded to include younger girls for whom the firefighting business is now a career option. In fact, the firefighter who put my grandson, Ayden, up in an engine seat at Raleigh’s Fire Station 6 when we visited on his 4th or 5th birthday was a woman. There was something kind of triumphant about that, and that he thought nothing of it, except that “she must be really brave, Pops.”

My only other encounters with firefighters came on “career days” at elementary and middle schools, when I’d be feeling pretty good about my talk about journalism until a fire truck pulled up and I became the brown shirt button next to a shiny badge. Even when I started taking bags of candy, the kids still preferred the fire engine. I couldn’t blame them.

So some weeks ago, I had my second meeting with the firefighters of Station 6 in Raleigh. (It’s at Fairview and Oberlin Road.) It was around 9 p.m., and I rolled into my apartment complex to find two engines, lights going, outside my building. This was a little disturbing, to put it mildly. I walked around the building and the firefighters, in their heavy yellow suits and big boots were combing the building looking for the sources of the gas leak that sprung the alarms that had alerted them to the problem some minutes before.

Most of the residents, myself included, stood outside just watching. This included a couple of older residents and young women sharing a place and a young family, the mother with a baby in her arms. One’s instinct in such a situation is to stand back and not “get in the way.” One wouldn’t interrupt a fireman any more than tap a surgeon on the shoulder in mid-operation to ask where the vending machines are.

But there were no flames, and the firefighters were calmly walking into all apartments with a Dominion Resources fellow testing the levels of gas. (Nice guy, too.) Gradually, the firefighters started answering worried residents’ questions, typically the same questions over and over: “Can we stay?” “Is it dangerous?” “What caused it?” “How do we know it won’t happen again?” “Is my grandson safe to stay here?”

Sure, in hindsight we were wasting their time, but not once did any firefighter act in a hurried way, or rush the questions or the answers, and most went further, patting people on the back, calmly reassuring them, saying, “Now if the alarm ever goes off, don’t you worry about calling us. You do it. This is what we do.”

What they do. I’m glad they had a quiet and family uncomplicated visit, but for every one of the men and women in uniform that night, there are too many days and nights that are not so quiet. They leave their families every morning and every afternoon knowing their lives might well be in danger. And too often, they are. Burns, falls, torn muscles, broken bones, injuries for which the consequences are a lifetime of pain and disability are all part of their working lives. They must be made of the stuff that enables them not to worry and carry on with their jobs, and I’m sure many of them love it. (It’s not uncommon for firefighting to be passed through generations in families.)

While I could have done without the excitement that night, and while I’m sorry for the trouble the firefighters had to go through, the conversation among neighbors the next day was one of unanimous gratitude. Such gratitude is shared, by the way, by Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin, who with her husband, Jim, has her own firefighter story.

“We called them one night to our condo building,” she said. “One of our neighbors had suffered a heart attack, and the firemen came and did CPR, and then they took him to the hospital. I figured, they’ll leave now. But they didn’t. They stayed with us, talked to us for a long time, and they prayed with us. They held our hands.  That’s what got me.  That they stayed and talked with us and….they didn’t have to do that.”  
The mayor told me the story when I called to put in a word of thanks for the firefighters. “Oh, I have a story of my own,” she said. And then told it.

Soon, I’ll take Ayden back to Fire Station Six, and the mayor will be going with us. Some heroes we never outgrow.

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