By Ann Fisher
The Columbus Dispatch
Copyright 2007 The Columbus Dispatch
All Rights Reserved
Ohio — Congress has been asked to establish Sept. 22 as National First Responders Appreciation Day.
Union County already sets aside Sept. 11, but despite all our “Hallmark holidays,” a national day seems an obvious choice.
Perhaps that would be the case if the request weren’t part of a parallel effort to fund a national communication system for emergency responders. Such a system might have stemmed the confusion after the attack on the World Trade Center and again after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
But where money, Congress and national priorities are concerned, the answer is never simple. In the case of a national day for first responders, it should be.
I’m thinking about the most-recent news photographs of firefighters working in frigid temperatures, icicles dripping from every conceivable surface.
Monday’s single-digit temperatures forced firefighters to battle hypothermia as well as the blaze that claimed the Old Bag of Nails Pub on the Near East Side.
Investigators think the fire was started on purpose.
I’m also thinking about the firefighters and other first responders who die in the line of duty.
And I’m thinking about an angry mayor I interviewed nine years ago.
A minor ice storm had swept the region the night before. I was assigned to make the usual calls throughout southeastern parts of central Ohio and beyond, to check for damage and troll for stories.
Most of the reports were routine: fender benders, cars off the road, schools closed. Then, just to wrap up with a New Lexington police dispatcher, I again asked, “So, nothing really interesting to report, eh?”
She paused and said, “Well, you heard about Crooksville, right?” That was nine years ago yesterday.
Today, I still can hear the Crooksville mayor screaming at me over the phone. When his quote appeared on the front page the next day, the story didn’t mention the volume.
He was understandably upset, struggling to make sense after losing two volunteer firefighters in a fire that morning.
I had pressed all day for an interview, and when I finally got him on the phone, I asked the grieving mayor to tell me about David Theisen and Stephen Carletti.
We already knew that Theisen was a 29-year-old bachelor who had recently attained his dream of working full time on a professional force, the Westerville Fire Department. But he still volunteered for the Crooksville department.
And we knew that Carletti was a 43-year-old father of three who worked full time as a forklift operator and volunteered with his wife, an emergency medical technician.
I wanted to know what they were like, however. And that was just about all the foolishness Mayor Douglas Cannon could take.
“They were volunteer firemen, and I think that pretty much tells you what they were like,” Cannon bellowed.
“A person who walks into a smoke-filled house fighting flames for no pay, a person who puts their life on the line because they want to do good — that pretty much tells you what kind of men they were.”
He probably wanted to cap that with, “OK, dummy?”
Cannon was still mayor when he died about seven years later, in 2005. I’d like him to know that I get it. I’d like him to know that the whole country does and that Congress will prove it.