By Bill Leukhardt
The Hartford Courant
PLAINVILLE, Conn. — How does a guy with a badly mangled right hand applaud?
By clapping his good left hand against his right forearm. While beaming a 200-watt smile.
That’s what volunteer Plainville firefighter and now-unemployable carpenter Marty Schiraldi did onstage Friday night at a Plainville Fire Department benefit for Schiraldi in front of 150 people at the VFW hall.
“I just heard the story yesterday and had to come,” said Sam Knee, who was there with his wife, Melissa Knee. They came from Farmington, where he works as a contractor and is a lieutenant in the town’s Tunxis Hose Volunteer Fire Department. “Don’t know him. He’s a brother in need.”
Each person paid $20 to be there. The event raised at least $2,000 to help Schiraldi, 53, unable to work since a table saw accident in June shredded two fingers and his thumb. He is unlikely to work as a carpenter again. The thumb should be usable but bones in both fingers are fused, so they will be rigid.
This month, Schiraldi started classes to become an EMT. He said his carpentry career is in the past and EMT work is his future career. It will be a way to help people and in some way pay back society for the support he and his wife received since his accident working on a door at a home.
“I’m just overwhelmed by the support from everybody,” Maxine Schiraldi, Marty’s wife, said during the benefit. “The fire department started planning this a week before they told us. So many people have been so kind to us. Every night after Marty got hurt people brought food. We get help without asking. The fire department has been like family.”
Fundraiser organizers sold tickets to firefighters across central Connecticut as well as more than 100 to people from town.
“We’d sold about 75 tickets as of a week ago, then sales really took off,” said event committee member Patrick Kilby, a former town council member.
More than a dozen people and businesses donated items for a raffle, including Leatha Toner, wife of town Fire Chief Kevin Toner. She spent about 180 hours making a fire department quilt with embroidered figures. She worked hard, she said, “because I wanted to raise as much money as possible.”
It sold for $500.
Chief Toner was there, leaning heavily on a walker as he moved. This was his first public event since having both knees replaced eight days earlier.
“This is my first time out since the operation,” he said. “This is important.”
One couple at the event volunteered to stay after and help clean up. They did not know Schiraldi and made the offer to pitch in.
Will Donovan, who served 18 years in the Plainville Fire Department before spinal damage forced him to retire two years ago, said he has attended fire department events as far away as as Pennsylvania to support fellow firefighters, whether he knows them personally or not.
“Any brother in need,” Donovan said after Schiraldi’s benefit. “We all depend on each other.”
“That’s Plainville,” said Susie Woerz, director of the town community food pantry who was part of the crew working the ticket sales table Friday night. “People here help each other.”
Copyright 2016 The Hartford Courant