By Sarah Langbein
Orlando Sentinel
Copyright 2007 Sentinel Communications Co.
ORLANDO, Fla. — Bob Flamily needed two more weeks – but his body gave out.
For a once-strapping man who lugged people out of burning buildings and fought in the Vietnam War, losing control of his body was hard to comprehend. But two more weeks might have eased some of that pain.
The veteran Orlando firefighter, who accused the city of hiding the illness that ravaged him from the inside, was scheduled to go before the Florida Supreme Court on June 6. In 2001, Flamily alleged that the city knew he had hepatitis C as many as 22 years before he was diagnosed.
Flamily died Tuesday night at his St. Cloud home. He was 58.
“Bob knew that his time was short, but Bob wanted to get to the Supreme Court,” said Steve Clelland, president of the Orlando Professional Firefighters, the local union. “He told me he wasn’t going to die until he got his day in court.”
Flamily became a poster child for hepatitis C, a blood-borne virus, in late 2001 when he announced plans to file a civil lawsuit against the city for failing to alert him to abnormal blood-test results from his annual physicals. The tests showed elevated liver-enzyme levels -- a possible sign of hepatitis -- as far back as 1978.
But Flamily didn’t find out about his virus, which his family and lawyers contend he contracted on the job, until 2000, after he retired.
By that time, it was untreatable.
“He had a big heart, a loving heart,” his wife, Romona Flamily, said Wednesday. “And he laughed a lot.
“Saving others ultimately cost him his life. But he always said if he could do it all over again, he’d still become a firefighter. He just got a wrong deal.”
When Flamily and other firefighters announced they intended to file a civil suit against the city in 2001, city officials denied that information about the disease was hidden from firefighters. In 2004, a $600,000 settlement was reached between the city and 28 firefighters.
After the settlement, Flamily pushed on with his own workers’ compensation claim, which he initially won at trial but was overturned by an appeals court. The setback, which devastated his lawyer, Geoffrey Bichler, left Flamily “unflapped.” Flamily’s attitude was positive and upbeat.
“You can’t ask these guys to put themselves at risk if you’re not going to protect them,” Bichler said. "[The battle with Flamily] was a slap in the face.”
Flamily’s terminal illness bound him to a wheelchair in his last years, Bichler said. Flamily yearned for days of sun and fishing, according to friends.
But what he wanted most was his day in court.
Flamily is survived by his wife of 20 years; one daughter, Betty Sanders; two granddaughters, Brittany Wetzel and Lainey Graulich; his mother, Anabell Flamily; and his beloved companion, Rusty, the toy poodle -- who was with him when he died. Services have not yet been planned.