By Ronnie Wachter
The Sun Times
LINCOLNSHIRE, Ill. — If everything works out as planned, Jordan King is going to have the coolest bed of any kid in Lincolnshire.
And if it does not work out as planned, his father is going to have . . . plenty of lumber.
Depending on what Bryan King does with the delivery the family received on Tuesday, 2-year-old Jordan’s bed might have a unique headboard. Bryan plans on turning the freshly uprooted sign that had stood for years in front of the neighborhood fire station, the location of Jordan’s birth, into the front end of his bed, announcing to all the Kings’ affinity for the Lincolnshire-Riverwoods Fire Protection District.
The sign/headboard idea was his wife’s; she promises that the parking lot delivery was not.
“My husband did look at me, wondering what I was thinking,” Miriam King said of her idea. “Hopefully it’ll actually work.”
The Kings’ connection with the fire district began on June 25, 2009, about a month before they expected their son to be born. When Mirian started having contractions, she and Bryan headed for the hospital in Evanston where they were scheduled to deliver; the route took them right past Fire Station 52.
“When my contractions were 10 minutes apart, we didn’t think we needed to rush to get there,” Miriam said.
Then the pace quickened.
“Luckily, I figured out we weren’t going to make it before we passed the fire station.”
The couple pulled into House 52’s parking lot and, with assistance from the medics on duty, Miriam made a healthy delivery in the parking lot. She brings the product of the medics’ work back every six months to give them cookies and let them see how Jordan is growing.
During their June 25, 2011 visit, the family learned that House 52 would soon have a new neighbor in the form of a police station, and that the sign marking only a fire station would be outdated.
Paul Schebel, information coordinator for the fire district, said the 6-foot-tall, 4.5-foot-wide piece of wood, weighing hundreds of pounds, had no future use there.
“It was just going into the garbage, into the construction heap,” Schebel said.
When Mirian heard this, she got an idea.
“I half-jokingly said ‘Oh, what are you doing with the old one, we’ll take it,’” she recalled.
The firefighters said the idea of a second life for the sign sounded great.
“It’s quite a piece of wood,” Schebel said.
Copyright 2011 Sun-Times Media, LLC