My Life and My Stories: Selected Stories from a Dedicated Fire Fighter/Paramedic/Er Nurse

By Richard H. Stilp

Every firefighter who has served a career in a professional department has stories. These stories are personal to me. The first 12 are those stories that changed me. They have forever affected me emotionally. Some were successful rescues while others were failure, all left a lasting impression. There are many more than just these 12 but these come to mind quickly and have the ability to leave me emotionally drained as I remember them detail by detail. The next eight incidents are those that were fun, funny, or had an important lesson learned. These are incident that I chose not to forget. All should give you a window into the life of a dedicated firefighter, paramedic, and ER nurse. These stories are not in a chronological order as they were written in the order that they came to mind. Some involved my response as a firefighter, while others occurred while I served as a lieutenant or a chief officer. They are not made up or embellished. These are “My Stories”.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664155411

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Copyright © 2021 by Richard H. Stilp.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 02/03/2021

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Introduction

HOW IT ALL STARTED

Chapter 1 The Rescuer Becomes The Offender. The Single Worse Day Of My Life

Chapter 2 A Hard Day, Father’s Day

Chapter 3 The Fire to Forget

Chapter 4 Thanksgiving Day, No Thanks to Be Given

Chapter 5 On My Way Home; Divine Intervention

Chapter 6 The Day that I Forgot My Training and Almost Paid with My Life

Chapter 7 Let’s Build A Van And Put The Battery In Front Of The Driver! Yea, That Makes Sense

Chapter 8 Basements? Who Builds A Basement in Florida?

Chapter 9 Stuck In The Bottom Of A Hole. I Could Have Been A Star!

Chapter 10 Being The Only Male Nurse in The Emergency Room. Guys are Tougher than Girls, Right?

Chapter 11 Saturday Afternoon and Only One Bullet

Chapter 12 I Can’t Go, I Have to Go Diving

JUST MEMORIES

Chapter 13 My First Call, I was Never Told That!!

Chapter 14 Firefighters Diving from Windows, This isn’t Supposed to Happen

Chapter 15 His First Fire, Let’s Kick Ass!!

Chapter 16 Electricity, My Enemy

Chapter 17 Fire Storm

Chapter 18 When A Friend Is Involved, I Never Shook So Hard

Chapter 19 The Stolen Rescue; In The Spotlight

Chapter 20 Parrot in A Tree

After A Long Career

DEDICATION

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T hese stories are dedicated to my lifelong friends. They are more like brothers to me. We met in Junior High School at 12 years old. We grew up together and all entered into emergency service careers at different times but all with the intent to serve our community.

Division Chief Ron Carroll, Orlando Fire Department.

Police Chief Mike McCoy, Orlando Police Department

And

To my immediate family who have been by my side for these 40 plus years and have sympathized, supported, and stood by during trying times.

This is my life. I still have great pride in the career that I chose and, I continue to have great respect for those who have followed me.

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INTRODUCTION

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A lthough I have authored a number of technical books, articles for trade magazines, and numerous training programs for firefighters and continuing education programs for nurses, I have never attempted to write fiction or biographical stories. This is my first attempt. When I’ve read stories by well know writers, I was amazed about how they could paint a picture with their words that actually placed me into the story. I’ve never had that talent.

One morning when I was having one of those weird emotional days. I sat at my computer and wrote the words Was it all worth it? From there I decided to write down those events that defined my adult life. I wrote maybe a page or two and stopped. I left the script for about a month. One night while having dinner with my sister and brother-in-law she asked if I was ever going to write a regular book. I explained that I don’t have the talent to place a reader into the story the way good writers do, but she planted a seed in my mind.

A short time after that dinner I opened the file I had named My Life and read what I had written about was it all worth it. Then I began writing about significant emergency calls that changed my life and my view of life. I found myself totally reliving each event. These are not presented in any particular order. They are in the order that they came to mind. Some happened early in my career and some later.

In some ways, putting these incidents on paper provided some level of healing. Even after well over twenty years, these incidents still haunt me. Since the writing of these twenty incidents, I find that more and more significant incidents pop into my head. After so many years there are too many to count.

When I finished the first twelve incidents, I sent the rough draft to my sister to read. I was curious to see her reaction. She was overwhelmed and said that although she thought it was good, she stated that there was too much tragedy and felt that anyone reading this would like to hear the lighter side of the FD. So, I wrote eight more incidents that were on the lighter side.

I know that the first twelve incidents are hard to take. They are written from my perspective from real life experiences. They are not embellished and are written exactly how I remember them. Others who were on these scenes with me, may remember them differently or have different feeling about them. Every firefighter perceives events differently.

I hope by reading this book, you get an inside look at the career of a firefighter/paramedic who was dedicated and served his community with honor. I hope you feel some of the experiences including the tragedies, successes, and even some of the fun that took place during my career. In addition, I want to once again say that this is just a snapshot of some of the thousands of incidents that firefighters go through in a career. These are My Stories.

PART 1

How It All Started

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I wanted to start this story with a little information about my background. I became interested in the profession of firefighting because of a television show named Emergency. In this show the two main characters; Jonny Gage and Roy DeSoto were paramedic firefighters working for LA County Fire Department. They would respond to fires, emergency rescues, and medical calls. It quickly became my favorite TV show and I would rush home from working at Walt Disney World to watch the new episode every week. One day, after watching an exciting episode, I called my Dad and asked him how I could go about becoming a paramedic firefighter. My father was a mechanical engineer and worked for an aerospace company. His response was I don’t know son, but if you go down to City Hall, you can ask them. I did, and in 1976 it became a reality and the rest is history.

The actor Randolph Mantooth played the character Jonny Gage. It has been a lifelong mission to meet him and thank him for his inspiration. I believe that there are thousands of firefighters around the country who would say the same thing. I’ve actually been to the fire station where the show was filmed in LA County. It is still exactly the way it was during the filming of the TV show. It is a working fire station and the firefighters still enjoy showing old firefighters, such as myself, around the station. I’m sure these youngsters get some amusement from those of us excited to visit Station 54, the location of the TV show Emergency.

I love the fire service. More than that, I love the dedicated men and women who make this profession their career. There is a certain personality that is attracted to the fire service. They are risk takers. Many of them drive cars too fast, drink too much, and are involved in activities that many would consider to be risky. They are skydivers, race car and race boat drivers, scuba divers, and bungy jumpers. They are mountain climbers and spelunkers. Afterall, what kind of personality would it require to willingly run into a burning building when everyone else is running out! In all of my years in the fire service I found that the majority of the firefighters would risk their own lives, in a second, to save the life of a complete stranger and not even give it a second thought. These victims are young or old, male or female, black or white, rich or poor but, to firefighters, these are simply people who need their help. These are truly special people.

As for me, I can honestly say that I can count on one hand the number of days that I didn’t look forward to going to work and have fingers left over. I’ve worked from the bottom to the top. I’ve served as a firefighter and a fire chief. I was the director of a large fire academy and taught critical thinking course work for fire officers on the college level. You will not find many firefighters with the longevity, commitment, or love for the profession that I have.

I’ve always believed that every successful incident could not be attributed to just one firefighter. There are no singular heroes but heroic actions done by teams of well-trained professionals just doing a job. It always takes a team to make a successful response and rescue. Although these are some of my experiences, other firefighters can tell similar stories and have lived similar careers to mine. I am certainly not special, but I remain committed to the fire service to this day.

And do I have memories! A lifetime of memories. So many activities, sights, and sounds bring back those many emergency responses that I was involved with. Many good, some bad. It seems easier to forget the good ones, especially the successful rescues where a life depended on you and you were there. Thankfully those seemed to happen much more often. Car crashes, falls, building fires, serious illnesses, accidents, and the list goes on. You were there to stabilize, extinguish, disentangle, and save the life involved. They were routine. But there are those other calls that for some reason resonate in my memories. Maybe because I’ve had the need to tell the stories over and over again. They are teaching moments. Either successes that you want your students to remember, or failures that you want you students to avoid.

Here I sit in the sunset of my life wondering if it all was worth it. I am writing this to answer that simple question as I look back at my career; was it worth it? In my younger days I struggled to pay