A Gift That Will Pay it Forward

Rich has been out of town for 2.5 weeks. He had a business training for our travel advisory business and then spent some time with his parents and sister in Florida. He then flew to the Midwest and spent time in Kansas City with Lily and Michelle and the Oslica family and then went on a quick trip to Omaha to connect with several good friends from our time there. When he was in Kansas City, he was able to do some work at Lily’s duplex and was able to take Michelle to the UFC fights being held in Kansas City. Sounds like they had a good time.

While Rich was in Kansas City, he talked to Michelle about Joe’s firefighting equipment. The Olathe Fire Department gave her his gear….to include his bunker gear, helmet, boots, etc. There was also a bag that he had his stuff he carried at the fire department, with all sorts of random things in there….gum, tools, receipts, etc. Rich duct taped a Rubbermaid tote and brought it home. Michelle has his helmet…the flag presented by the fire department, and his shadowbox presented to her from the department at his celebration of life. She was willing to part with these other things, which was such a huge gift for us. So many of his gear we can use ourselves. Rich emptied Joe’s bunker gear pockets and put most of the contents right into his pockets. We currently have his bunker gear in the special washers at our fire hall as he had been in a fire right before he died and his gear also smelled of diesel. I will be wearing his structure gloves and Rich his utility gloves. He had two black nomex firefighter hoods. I will take one, Rich the other. Our heads will be covered by his gear when we are in cold or fiery situations. I took his small flashlight to carry in my EMT jacket. He had 3 challenge coins in his bag….two of them being religious that I gave to him…a St. Florian coin (the patron saint of firefighters) and the firefighter’s prayer coin I put in his stocking the first Christmas he was working as a firefighter. The other was his OFD coin. As we continued to look through his bag, we found a “Cyndi Strong” bracelet from when I was first diagnosed with cancer a little over 5 years ago. He had told me his had broken, so I gave him mine and he reinforced that one and would where it. The broken one was in his bag. Joe loved to cook for his crew. Because of where he was stationed, he often cooked for a double crew – about 9 people. It started out as punishment for being the new guy, but then they realized he enjoyed cooking and was pretty good at it, he volunteered to do it regularly. I can’t tell you how many texts I got from him asking me to take a photo of one of my recipes for him to try out on his guys. He felt like he needed to expand their palates and would make things like Okinawan chicken curry and rice. There were two receipts from Walmart in his bag from 6 weeks prior to his death where he had purchased food for meals for his guys on shift with him. Of all the things, these two pieces of paper made the waterworks flow hard for me. We found three of his accountability tags, and will each carry one with us, as it has his photo on it. I also found his small notebook from the City of Olathe, which had a message that hit home. It was such a gift to go through these things….the objects of his trade, that we are now trying to do to honor him. To have his things with us on our calls – absolutely priceless. We can’t thank the OFD and Michelle enough for letting us have these items.