Submitted by Joe Kelly, Republican candidate for State Senate, 36th district
We observe National Fire Prevention Week™ this year October 4–10. I salute the courageous first responders who run toward danger to protect the rest of us and our property. I’d like to share my experience as a volunteer fire fighter with you.
I have always been the kind of person who runs toward trouble, not away from it. That instinct is what sent me across the plaza on September 11th, and it’s what stayed with me long after the dust settled. Ground Zero taught me something I couldn’t unlearn: If I was ever called on again, I wanted to be ready. Not just willing. Trained.
So, I signed up. First with the Greenwich Volunteer Hose and Chemical Co., and later with Amogerone Volunteer Fire Co. I went through Firefighter 1 certification then kept going: fire truck driver training, extrication courses, every skill they’d teach me. I wanted to be someone who could actually do something when the call came in, not just show up.
For ten years, on and off, I answered those calls. Some stretches I ran nearly every week. I’ve stood on I-95 for hours in the dead of night, directing traffic around a wreck while headlights streamed past in the dark. I’ve pulled up to houses fully engulfed in flame, to brush fires racing across dry fields, to cars folded around trees with people trapped inside. I trained to cut them free, and more than once, I did. I saw things that never fully leave you. And I helped, every time, without ever asking for a thing in return. That was the whole point. It made me feel like I was finally giving something back to the town that had given me so much.
Nothing compares to the feeling of climbing onto that truck when the tones dropped: lights cutting through the dark, sirens screaming, adrenaline taking over before your mind even catches up. It was an honor every single time.
What stays with me most, though, are the people. Ten years on, I still run into them around town, and the bond doesn’t fade. When you’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with someone in the middle of a burning house or a highway wreck at 3 a.m., something forms between you that ordinary friendship doesn’t come close to. It takes a rare kind of person to run into danger for people they’ve never met and ask nothing in return. Every first responder I’ve served with deserves far more credit than they’ll ever get.
Joe Kelly is a candidate for the Connecticut State Senate.