Responding

Responding

The Unexpected Education of a Volunteer Firefighter

Hersch Wilson

To the Old Guys:

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

“Ulysses” Lord Alfred Tennyson

1

Dream:

2009: I drove up and into our garage at 6:30 a.m. I killed the engine, and put

my head on the steering wheel. I sat there for a while, until I could hear the

dogs whining for me to come in.

I walked in, the dogs wagged their tails, as if nothing had changed, as if to-

day was like any other day. The house was still dark, the sun just beginning

to send light over the eastern hill that shadows our home.

We’d been out on the call since midnight. Laurie and the girls were asleep. I

could have called my sister in Minneapolis, she was an ex- firefighter, but I

thought I would just wait.

I walked in the bedroom, took off my fire department clothes and took a

shower. I stared at wall and decided not to think. I decided to get it over with

and try to go back to sleep.

I was exhausted.

I sunk into bed and I fell immediately sleep.

And the dreams came.

Vividly: We were back at the crash. The two cars were destroyed. There were

dozens of teenager walking around. The firefighters were working under the

flashing red lights and strobe lights of our Rescue truck. Hydraulic tools

whined. Radios were crackling. Firefighters and EMT’s were pointing, calling

instructions. There was the smell of gasoline, oil, roadway.

2

I was standing next to the Chief. He pointed to me, “Go talk to them, Her-

sch.”

I walked over to the little car. In my bunkers, I got down on my knees and

looked through the backseat window. They were just sitting there, leaning

against each other.

I touched the one closest to me. She opened her eyes, smiled and said,

“We’re just joking you know. We’re just trying to fool our friends. Look at us!

We’re fine.”

Then she closed her eyes again.

“Hey,” I said. “Get up. Wake up. It’s time to go.”

But now she didn’t move. I touched her face. It was cold. I backed out.

I turned and face our Chief and I shrugged.

“They won’t wake up,” I said.

My cell phone rang.

I startled awake. I was in our bedroom. Laurie mumbled, “Who’d call us so

early?”

I picked it up, looked at the time. It was just before 7:00.

I answered slowly, “Hello?”

It was a friend of my daughter’s, a member of her 16 year-old girls’ soccer

team.

She was crying, hysterical.

She cried, “Please Hersch, tell me they’re not dead. Please.”

For a second, I didn’t understand what she was talking about.

3

“Who’s dead?” I thought.

Then I remembered: They were all dead.

Then I understood: They were all dead and they were all kids we knew.

The monstrous wave from the seabed had risen, poured ashore, engulfing us

all.

4

Chapter 1

1984: I hated wearing suits. I hated wearing suits because I sweat. Didn’t

matter if it

was a blazing summer day in Hartford, Connecticut or a blizzard in Minneap-

olis,

Minnesota. My temperature ran high.

For most of my twenties, I had been a dancer. Sweating permitted. But now,

retired from my first love and career, I was expected to wear suits. I had

joined the much more formal world of work. Ties, white shirts, blue shirts,

wool suits, cotton suits. I felt as if I’d moved to a very foreign land.

That summer, I was working for my father’s company. I was assigned to a

project for The AEtna Insurance Company in Hartford. We were designing a

new training program for their salesforce. I was one of the project managers.

Mornings were meetings. In suits. My manager called them, “Going to War

Suits.” We’d assemble in a meeting room adjacent to the office of the Execu-

tive Vice

President. A red light would go on over his door. We would all stand, and the

EVP

would enter and the meeting would begin.

Usually around 11:00, we would take a break and I would hustle to the men’s

room, take off the shirt I had sweat through, exchange it with a clean shirt

out of my

5

briefcase, change and zip back just in time before the red light flashed on.

Everyone

else seemed born in a suit. Calm, cool, collected. Like the English in India,

unfazed in

any heat. I daily wondered if my genetic makeup had designed me to live in

the very

north of Ireland or the arctic circle.

Sunday’s we flew to Hartford. Fridays we’d catch the last flight back home to

Minneapolis. We were all frequent flyers, with thousands of miles. Our chief

entertainment was competing for the few first class seats. The winners would

make a

point of rolling apples down the aisle to the losers in coach.

One Friday in August, by happenstance, I discovered that I was on the same

flight back to Minneapolis as my dad, who was returning from New York.

When he

heard that I was on his flight, he suggested that, instead of my usual quick

change in

the airport to shorts, T-shirt and sneakers, I keep my suit on. He didn’t ex-

plain why.

Being an occasionally dutiful son, I did.

Meeting me at the airport, he explained. He had just sold the company for

multiple millions. I knew he had been working on this for a year, it was his

master

6

plan, but I was floored by the speed with which he had accomplished it.

He was positively gleeful. The entrepreneur making the victory lap.

“Look,” he finally said, “this is great news for everyone in the company. An-

drew

— The CEO — is flying back with us to meet everyone.”

Acutely aware of organizational politics, he then went on to hint, “This is an

important time for you to make a good impression.”

“Huh,” was all I could say. I had questions, but my dad was surrounded

by his lawyers and the rest of his entourage. The questions, like, “What the

hell does this mean for me?” would have to wait.

Fortunately, I had this project. We were focused on our team winning the

project-of the-year award and the bonuses that went with it. I just hoped this

acquisition wouldn’t throw a wrench into Laurie’s and my plan to use the

money to go

to the Caribbean for vacation.

On this flight, I did not make the first class cut and I was sitting in 25D, my

default seat. Aisle, close to the men’s room, usually any empty middle seat.

After we

took off, I flipped down the tray, spread out my notebook papers on said mid-

dle seat,

got a cup of coffee and just did what we did on planes, work, I created

spreadsheets.

I loved spreadsheets.

7

Somewhere over Detroit, the CEO walked back to meet us. I saw him

approaching out of the corner of my eye, so I studiously kept working.

He cleared his throat, I looked up. He introduced himself — he seemed to be

a

very nice guy. He asked me what I was working on.

I probably went into a little too much airline-coffee, wanting-to-make-an-im-

pression

detail, for his eyes soon glazed over and he beat a retreat back to first

class. But I thought, “Hah, bingo, I am in with the new boss.”

I put my notes away, stretched and looked around the airplane, an old

Northwest DC-9. There were at least fifty young professionals just like me,

men and

women. I thought, we are in charge of our futures. We are important people.

We are

working hard, making money, going places. It felt good.

After having lived out of trunk and in multiple cities as a dancer, it was odd

but satisfying to be in the work force, in a real job. No more auditions. No

more long stretches of unemployment.

Job, money, marriage and a house! A few years after quitting dance, I had

married. Laurie was another ex-dancer slowly finding her way towards a new

career. We were happy young urban professions. Laurie was working as ward

secretary on a cancer floor at a local hospital and in her free time chasing

our two escape artist dogs around our Uptown neighborhood.

8

Once, when Laurie and her sister were walking around the Minneapolis lakes,

a

pierced and tattooed crew of young Goths walked up behind them. One of

them

whispered, “I hope you and your Yuppie spawn die.”

Laurie and sister both laughed. We were optimistic about our special futures.

We were in charge. They weren’t. We had a plan for our lives. They didn’t.

We were

making money. They — obviously — were not.

The only shadow on our horizon was my family. It was in shambles.

My father had become a meteoric business success. He had started his adult

life at eighteen as a father of one. After finishing college, he began his pro-

fessional

life as a High School Drama teacher in Sheldon, Iowa. Not making enough

money for

a growing Catholic family, he moved to selling insurance. After a few years,

he

parlayed that into a motivational speaking career and then built the second

largest

business training company in the country at the time, aptly named Wilson

Learning

Corporation. A decade after that, he appeared on The Today Show with Jane

Pauly

9

billed as the “World’s Greatest Salesperson.”

Goes without saying that my father and mom divorced. It is a near impossi-

bility

to stay together when you were married at seventeen and eighteen, one

spouse

raising six children and the other called by the twin sirens of success and

money. The

deck is stacked against you. It can be overwhelmingly seductive. It was to

my father.

He wanted more.

As the oldest, I had missed the run up to and the explosion of the family. I

had

been pursuing my career in Canada and Europe. By the time I returned as an

ex-dancer, the fix was in. The family, the six kids and our mom had been cut

adrift and

my dad was off to be wealthy and famous.

It was Bad Times at Black Rock for my brother and sisters, all teenagers.

They

were dropping out of schools, quitting college, making bad — seriously bad—

boy

friend and girl friend choices. Even our great and wonderful family dog, Max,

sensing

10

disaster, ran away, headed for that great farm in Northern Minnesota never

to be seen

again.

By the early eighties, five years into the divorce, even my dad finally noticed

something was awry. He called me into his office one dad and full of “can

do!” energy

told me, “Hersch, we need to do something about the family. What do you

think?”

I made the normal suggestions. Therapy. Spending less time with new

girlfriend, more time with his kids. Maybe a family trip. “Or,” I said, “I’m just

thinking

out loud here, you could write big checks.”

He was silent for a moment. I’m not sure he liked the big check idea.

And anyway, my ideas were just a launchpad for his. He brushed them aside

and dropped the bombshell. “I’m buying a ranch in Santa Fe. I think we

should all

move there and start a family business. We are going to build a conference

center

and run it. It will bring us all together.”

That stopped all conversation in the room. My brain short-circuited.

“Where? What? Why?” I finally sputtered.

But I should have been prepared. He was the original big idea guy. He did

11

not believe in small solutions. And now, after selling his company he had big

money.

I’m pretty sure he had not consulted a family therapist about this. It was

pure Larry

Wilson. Big, bold, full of risk. His favorite kinda game.

Of course, you think, we didn’t go! Who would be that foolish? Why would we

leave good jobs and a city we loved for New Mexico?

But my dad was the world’s greatest salesperson. His elixir was especially

intoxicating to our family.

So. The short of it is in the winter in 1985, Laurie and I found ourselves in the

West, in Santa Fe, with now three dogs, no friends and tenuous employment

in a new

family business.

It’s shocking, by the way, how many people find themselves in Santa Fe un-

der

similar circumstances. We arrive with a couple of bags, a vague idea of what

the

future might hold and a hope that this funky little ancient town and the big

vistas

might change everything: Heal a family, provide wealth or complete some

sort of

spiritual journey.

12

Going West is very American. It’s where we have gone to escape the shack-

les of family, status and even suits. We go west to start again, to re-invent

ourselves. More than just metaphorically, in the cities of the North and the

East, the horizons are too close, the society regimented, all the niches filled.

It’s harder to see yourself as something new. It’s hard to see anything at all.

The West is huge, the horizons hundreds of miles distant. So many things are

possible in that great a space.

But for Laurie and I, we definitely fell into the camp of having no real idea

why

were there. In fact, in the beginning I was excited primarily because I could

hang my

suits in a plastic bag in the back of my closet. Whether winter or summer I

could wear

shorts and a t-shirt to work.

How cool was that?

Chapter 2

An adventure is an endeavor in which the outcome is uncertain. Another way

of saying that is you have no idea what you’re getting into.

There are two kinds of adventures. The first are the ones you sign up for. The

second are the ones that you didn’t sign up for, you just all of a sudden find

yourself

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in.

Moving to Santa Fe from staid Minnesota was an adventure and it was defi-

nitely both kinds.

First, there was Santa Fe. First impressions: Signs going into theaters: “No

Guns Allowed.” Incredible views. Mountains. Lots of loose dogs. Hispanic-

Hippy-Artsy craftsy-Native American-Adobe-history-bound place. All conver-

sations seemed to start with, “Well, I’ve been in Santa Fe twenty years.” Al-

ways trumped by someone else saying, “My family has been here since the

17th century.”

Oh.

Second, Santa Fe was clearly a place of opportunity, mostly because it was

rural, and there wasn’t a lot of infrastructure. It was a sleepy little mountain

town. Where we started the business, out past Pecos, New Mexico, if you

wanted something done you most likely had to do it yourself. Create a new

phone company. Build waste water treatment plant. Hire and train hotel

staff.

Figure out how to care for sick or injured guests, eighty miles from a hospital.

One night, flush with this particular realization, Laurie said, “I’m going to

take an EMT class.”

I had no idea what that was. So I said, “Huh?”

She was cooking, dish towel thrown over her shoulder, blonde hair in a pony-

tail. She threw strands of pasta to the dogs, and continued, “Emergency

Medical Technician. It’s the training that ambulance and fire department

14

people have. There’s a class starting in September. Yep, I’m going to take it.

I think I can use it for work, if we have a medical emergency at the ranch.”

In retrospect, this should not have surprised me. Laurie came from a medical

family. Her father Ward was a Hospital Administrator in Minnesota. Her

mother Donna

was not only a doctor, she also had been one of only nine women in her

medical

school class at the University of Minnesota. Laurie had enjoyed being a ward

secretary on an Oncology floor. She wanted to talk about patients, death,

treatments,

doctors and weird chemo stories.

Here we were polar opposites. I came from a long line of men who became

immediately lightheaded when a conversation drifted towards blood or body

parts.

Any time a conversation would venture into medical stuff, my father, brother

or I

would promptly jump in with, “Hey, how about those Vikings?” (The football

team) My

five sisters and my mother were made of stouter stuff.

Laurie being Laurie, of determined Norwegian stock, plunged right in. Over

the next few months, her evenings were spent studying the text and occa-

sionally

15

— ignoring my objections — using me as a patient to splint, immobilize and

do head to toe assessments. No matter how many times I thought she was

flirting when she palpated my chest or legs, it never panned out. She was al-

ways very focused and serious. I did have to finally insist that she not talk

about breach-deliveries of

babies or traumatic eye injuries over dinner.

Six months later she graduated, a new EMT.

We celebrated and went out to a lunch with my sisters. We were sitting in

this

little cafe, the Tesuque Village Market, tucked into a valley north of Santa Fe.

It was a

Saturday afternoon. My sisters and Laurie were talking about the move to

Santa Fe.

We were sitting around a big table, sun pouring in.

Bonnie asked, “How are you feeling Peg?”

Two of my sisters, Peggy and Patty, had been hit by a drunk seventeen-year-

old boy

the year prior. Peg still had some scarring from the crash, but otherwise

seemed to be

doing better. Some of her memory was returning, her speech was less falter-

ing.

“I’m okay, I guess. I have bad headaches occasionally and once and awhile a

16

nightmare, you know? I’m in the car and see the headlights coming at me,

and the

next thing I know, I’m lying on my back on the road and there is this ambu-

lance guy

over me. I start yelling for Patty, but no one answers. I try to get up, to get to

Patty, but

they just held me down.”

Patty smiled at Peggy. “I was screaming at them to let me see you. But they

kept saying they were taking care of you. All I could see was that there was

so much

blood, and the car was destroyed.”

I tapped my fingers on the table.

Bonnie jumped in, talking to Peggy, “It was so scary. I got to the hospital just

as

they were wheeling you out of the emergency room up to surgery. They had

cleaned

you up, you grabbed my hand. I was crying so hard. The room that you had

been in

was covered with bloody bandages and towels. That’s when I got terrified.”

I looked at Laurie sitting next to me. She raised her eyebrows. I was feel-

ing

light-headed, but being a guy there was no way was I going to admit it.

Peggy felt for the scar on her cheek. “The nurses said that all the blood was

17

coming from my head and this cut. My cheek, I guess was flopped open and

bleeding a lot.”

She pushed her scar in and out with her finger.

The room started to spin.

“Jeez,” I heard Laurie blurt out from miles away, “There he goes!”

The next thing I knew, there was a woman kneeling down over me. She was

about forty-five, blonde. She was wearing a blue jacket with a Star of Life

patch.

Behind her, I could see Laurie, arms crossed, and the rest of my sisters.

The Blonde said, “My name is Betty. I’m an EMT with the Tesuque Fire

Department. How do you feel?”

“Very sleepy,” is all that I could think to say.

Laurie chimed in, “He fainted. We were talking about an accident his sisters

were in. He doesn’t handle that kinda of stuff well.”

Betty nodded. “Okay, well let’s just get your vitals and see how you feel in a

minute.”

I just nodded, feeling a familiar twinge of embarrassment.

Betty started taking my blood pressure. Laurie knelt down to watch. “I’m tak-

ing

an EMT class,” she said to Betty.

“Cool,” Betty said as she felt for my pulse. “Are you going to join a fire

department? We are really short on EMTs.”

18

“Really?” Laurie asked. “Huh. I hadn’t even thought about that.”

I was going to say, “Hey, I’m the one lying on the ground,” but then Betty

turned to me. “Your vitals are fine. Your BP is a little low. Your blood sugar is

normal.

You’re not having chest pains. So, we can take you in to the hospital if you

want . . .”

Laurie jumped in. “He’s okay. I know it looks bad when he has that seizure

thing.”

She mimicked the shaking, trembling thing I apparently do. I thought it can’t

possibly look that dorky.

“But, really he did the same thing when they took his cast off his leg, when

he

had stitches taken out and when he saw some guy drown in a movie . . .”

Laurie sometimes could be too honest. I interrupted.

“Ya, ya ya, I’m fine. Sorry for the trouble.”

Betty smiled, “Okay, I’ll just have you sign the paperwork.”

She turned to Laurie. “Think about the fire department. It’s really fun and

you

can use what you learned in the EMT Class.”

“I will” Laurie said, helping me up. “I’ll do that.”

Betty packed up her gear, stashed it all in a backpack, waved and walked out

the door. My sisters clucked over me, and Laurie walked me out to our car.

19

A few weeks later, we were sitting in the kitchen on a rare morning when we

were both home. I was sitting on the kitchen floor, playing bounce the tennis

ball off

the kitchen wall with Zuni, our two-year-old German Shepherd. He would

chase it all

over the kitchen, knocking over anything in the way. Occasionally, he’d bring

it back

to me.

This had been going on for twenty minutes with Laurie every few minutes

absent-mindedly yelling at both of us to knock it off.

Laurie was at the kitchen counter. She was doing ranch paperwork, but she

had that

scary thoughtful look. The look women have right before they say, “I want a

new

couch.”

Then, she snapped her work folder closed, looked at me and said, “I think we

should join the fire department.”

I replied, “We can’t afford a new . . . what?”

Honestly, I had misgauged Laurie’s enthusiasm for the EMT stuff.

“Look,” I said. “I know that EMT, whats-her-name . . .”

“Betty,” Laurie reminded me.

“Ya, anyway, she made it sound fun and all, but where are you going to find

the

20

time?”

“I don’t think it’s that bad. Turns out my EMT instructor belongs to the fire

department here. I think it’s call Hondo, or Condo City, or something like

that. He said

it’s Tuesday nights and Saturday mornings. Not that big a deal. They do

about one

hundred calls a year and you don’t have to go on all of them. He also said

they were

short on people and that would love to have both of us. It’d be fun!”

I put my hands up.

“Listen,” she continued, as she walked over and slumped down on the floor

next to me and Zuni, “I also think it’s important that we do something to-

gether that

has nothing to do with your family or the ranch. Otherwise all we’ll do for the

rest of our lives is work. Everyday, weekends and holidays. We will end up

pale, boring stick people.”

“Um, why don’t we buy a new couch?” I said, trying to lure her away from

this

zany idea. She was not to be deterred.

She continued, “I’ve already ordered a new couch. So don’t try to change the

subject! It will be good for you. You have no friends here, all you do is work.

It’s not

natural.”

21

I squinted my eyes and thought for a moment. Nope, I couldn’t see myself as

a

firefighter holding an axe. “Why don’t we think about it . . .?”

“I did!” Laurie said, “I filled out the applications and we are supposed to go

to a

meeting tomorrow night. How cool is that!”

I did not think it was remotely cool. First, had Laurie forgotten the whole talk-

about-blood-faint-thing?

Second, I was not even remotely mechanically inclined. In the Minnesota

farming community where I grew up the Scandinavian farmers who knew me

would

be a bit frightened to know that I was contemplating become a firefighter.

The men I

grew up around were all burly, quiet, incredibly competent folk. Most were

founder’s

of the volunteer fire department in rural Eden Prairie, Minnesota. They were

farmers, builders, mechanics and veterinarians. They‘d get up before the

sun, plow forty

acres, disassemble an ancient tractor engine and then help with rebuilding a

barn.

These silent and only slightly mythical men could get any engine to start in

the

22

dead of a Minnesota winter night and I’m sure with their dowsing sticks suck

water

out of the very ground to fight fires. They were the sons of the sons of the

Vikings.

(The real Vikings)

I was none of those things. It was widely acknowledged that I had not the

aptitude. I was, after all was said and done, an actor! A dancer! I was only

pretending to be a business guy.

Further, no one in my family had ever been a firefighter. One aunt had been

a

Rescue Paramedic in California, but we wrote her off as Crazy Aunt Ruthie,

the

adrenaline junkie. Her boyfriend, another paramedic-firefighter, was killed

while

going one hundred miles an hour on a motorcycle in the desert. This was

proof

positive to us that we needed to suppress the risk-loving part of our nature

and all

associated careers, like firefighting.

But Laurie knew me and she knew she had one more card to play.

“You know you’re bored to death,” she said as we continued. “You can go to

meetings, do all those business things. But none of that is you. You are not

built to

23

work in an office.”

I started to argue. But she shut me up.

“Look, the track you’re on, even with the new business, is back to wearing

suits.

Do you really want to die in a suit? Wearing a grey suit, a white shirt and tie

and white

t-shirt? Bald, out of shape? Just keel over in some strange city at a business

meeting?

Where no one knows you? Cause that’s the path your on, kiddo. It’s not you.”

“We’re going and you’re coming.” Laurie finally said, ending my musing. She

was determined, Norwegian, full of “I know what is best for you.”

And so we stepped into our big adventure.

One of my favorite adventure stories is the epic journey of Sir Ernest

Shackleton and the 1914 expedition to cross Antarctica. In short, it didn’t

work out, at

least as planned. Their ship, The Endurance, was crushed by the ice and the

crew spent two years on the ice flows and the open ocean in life boats before

making back

to civilization.

One of the subplots was that there was a stowaway. Perce Blackborow, all of

sixteen years old, smuggled himself aboard the ship in Buenos Aries. Next

time you beat yourself up for making a stupid decision, consider young Mr.

24

Blackborow. Probably one of the worst impulsive choices in the history of

choices.

Anyway, he was discovered when The Endurance was at sea. Shackleton de-

cide to keep him aboard and he lived through an adventure that he could not

have possibly imagined.

Our decision to join the Fire Department and to go on this adventure, was

made so impulsively and lightly — “let’s stowaway! What’s the worst that

could happen?” We had no idea how it would change us or what we would

see. Like the sixteen-year-old Blackborow, we just thought it just seemed like

a good idea at the time.

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