By Bob Doucette
The Oklahoman
OKLAHOMA CITY — It was the worst news a mother could imagine. And Ted Wilson was the man who had to give it to her.
Wilson was with the woman and her family July 7 on the banks of Lightning Creek in south Oklahoma City. Gerardo Canales, 13, had disappeared in the creek’s rushing floodwaters the day before, and searchers had just found his body.
Wilson’s task: Tell Gerardo’s mother that her son’s body was found in the Oklahoma River, two miles from where he fell in the creek.
“It’s never easy,” said Wilson, 53, the Oklahoma City Fire Department chaplain. “When we show up, our primary job is to mitigate the impact. Instead of recovery (of the body), we try to restore families so they can put a period on it, so they can start a new chapter.”
Wilson tries to give people what they need during a crisis.
“I stand in the gap initially,” he said. “I try to find their pastor, get them connected to their people. Whatever they need, I try to provide them.”
More than spiritual guidance
Wilson’s path to chaplaincy started more than 30 years ago, when he was serving in the U.S. Army Reserves and studying theology at a Kentucky Bible college. He’s served as a youth minister in Heavener and received a theology degree from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. But he found his true calling when he started working with an Army chaplain.
Wilson later went to Army chaplain school and has served in that capacity. He became chaplain for the Oklahoma City Fire Department in 1989.
His job is complicated. In addition to normal chaplain duties — death notifications, hospital visits, attending funerals and counseling — Wilson also is involved in much of the department’s human resources work.
The job was structured this way by design, said Deputy Fire Chief Cecil Clay. In order to be a paid employee of the department, Wilson needed to be involved in other facets of city business outside of being a spiritual counselor.
It also meant that he had to go through firefighter training and serve as a front-line firefighter. Living the life of a firefighter helps Wilson comprehend what firefighters and the people they serve endure.
“It’s hard to understand the mentality of how people cope with tragedy unless you know what they’re going through,” Clay said.
Watch him interact at the downtown fire station, though, and you get a feel of his true nature. At one moment, he’s asking about a fellow firefighter’s pregnant wife. A moment later, he’s talking with another firefighter about an injury he suffered. He knows these people’s stories, which in turn helps him know how he can help them.
Being ‘that safety net’
One of the biggest parts of his job is helping fellow firefighters deal with stress. Firefighters sometimes see horrible things, be it from car accidents, fires or other scenes of tragedy. The temptation is for them to bottle up their feelings and pretend everything is OK, Wilson said.
After a bad incident, he’ll get together with the firefighters who were involved and get them talking.
“When it becomes overwhelming, I have to be that safety net for the tightrope walker when he falls,” he said.
Wilson has been trained in counseling. But it was in the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that he and many other counselors learned what it took to help emergency workers and victims deal with trauma.
About 950 firefighters worked the 1995 bombing; a third of those still work for the department now, Wilson said. Of that original number, only 17 have retired due to permanent disability caused by post-traumatic stress disorder, or slightly fewer than 2 percent, he said.
“Firefighters spend a third of their lives in the fire station or within running distance of a big, red truck, so you have to be family-oriented (toward other firefighters),” Clay said. “You just can’t hang your feelings at the door.”
Still, some tragedies can be overwhelming, especially those involving children, Wilson said.
“Kids will reach up and grab you by the neck.”
Which brought him back to July 7, on the banks of Lightning Creek.
‘It wears you out’
The disappearance of Gerardo Canales in a flooded Lightning Creek had all but sealed the boy’s fate. When Wilson went to the creek to meet the family, he had to be prepared for the eventuality that Gerardo would be found dead.
An Oklahoma Highway Patrol helicopter spotted a boy’s body, meaning that someone would need to confirm that it was Gerardo.
“I went to the river site and asked for a picture (of the boy). I went with the uncle, with the picture, to confirm the ID.”
Once that was done, Wilson had to find Gerardo’s mother and deliver the bad news.
“Every situation is different. Grief is grief, no matter what. If I can give them a little piece of meaning to their pain ... (that) the amount of pain they feel corresponds with the love they had for their loved one.”
He finds his job rewarding.
“If I died tomorrow, or today, my wife and children know I’ve done everything I’ve wanted to do and accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish,” he said.
“To me, it’s not a job. It’s a calling. To me, it’s been extremely rewarding.”
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