By Sally Bridges
Daily Camera (Boulder, Colorado)
BOULDER, Colo. — Area emergency responders are going pink, and they are proud of it. They’re even throwing a communitywide party and challenging others to wear pink, too.
On Oct. 11, North Metro Fire Rescue District firefighters and police officers from the Denver area will join forces to fight breast cancer with a special one-day event “Fight with Fire -- Fight for a Cure.” The free event, which will be held at North Metro’s new training center in Erie, will feature live music, Flight for Life helicopter tours, live firefighting demonstrations and SWAT demonstrations. There will even be a full-size pink fire truck on display that has been touring the country to honor women with breast cancer.
While all the events are free, the responders will be collecting donations for the Diana Price-Fish Cancer Foundation and Breast Cancer Network of Strength.
“This is a Colorado event by Colorado first responders who wanted to take a timeout to support women who traditionally fight this disease,” North Metro spokeswoman Wendy Forbes said. “We knew we had to do something.”
Enthusiasm for the event just kept growing and sort of took on a life of its own, she said. It also will be the first time the public will be allowed to tour North Metro’s new 14-acre fire rescue training center in Erie. The new, state-of-the-art training facility is designed to keep firefighters prepared for a variety of emergencies, Forbes said. During the event, kids will be allowed to practice escaping from a smoke-filled room under safe and controlled conditions,
The room is filled with harmless theatrical smoke that allows kids to practice important escape skills in a safe environment, she said. It’s a rare opportunity for the public to get an up-close view of fire and police professionals demonstrating their skills, she said.
Circle of Willis band and Maynard Mills Blue Band also are scheduled to perform.
It will be the first major pub
lic performance for Circle of Willis, guitarist Brian Mills said. Mills is a North Metro firefighter/paramedic. The five members of the band, which formed about a year ago, are all firefighters. They play a wide variety of music from rock and funk to blues, Mills said.
Mills’ father is Maynard Mills a well-known blues musician, who also will perform.
“That’s where I got my start
and taste for music,” the younger Mills said. “I grew up around that band. I have the blues influences and now I’m developing my own style.”
That style is tough enough to be a little pink for this special event.
“I think it’s a cool thing, what we are doing,’ Mills said. “It’s a cool thing for sure.”
The Fight with Fire event, the first of its kind for North Metro, will play host to the
Pink Ribbon Tour, which inspired the local event, Forbes said. The Pink Ribbon Tour features a full-size pink fire truck that’s been touring the country with pink-clad fire fighters.
The national tour is the creation of Dave Graybill, a Glendale, Ariz., firefighter. It was a call for men in a male-dominated profession to honor women who fight a female-dominated disease, he said.
The tour has no sponsors, which allows Graybill the freedom to chart his own course to spread his message. Breast cancer survivors are encouraged to sign the truck and tell their story.
Graybill bought the pink fire truck with his own money and is in the middle of a 10,000-mile tour with stops in 32 cities. The tour stops support local cancer foundations, but not the truck itself, Graybill said. Firefighters on the truck sell pink T-shirts and the proceeds are used to buy gas, Graybill said.
Sunday the tour stopped in Cleveland then detoured to a girls soccer game in Ashland, Ohio, to surprise one of the players, whose grandmother is fighting the disease.
“Her mother had breast cancer and she drove two hours to see the truck,” he said. “She started crying as she told us her story. It gave us goose bumps.”
So when the event was complete, they followed the woman to her daughter’s soccer game in Ashland and watched her team win, he said. It’s not uncommon for the truck to make surprise stops to offer support, he said.
“If I want to drive to Canada, we can drive to Canada. We’re just men honoring women,” Graybill said. “The message is that we can honor women and their fight against illness.”
The Pink Ribbon Tour’s official slogan, “Cares Enough to Wear Pink,” is a challenge for all men to wear pink for three days, Oct. 25-27.
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