Our helmets sit silently on top of our heads yet somehow they scream in testomoney to the trials we have endured. Once they were brand new...just like us. Polished, shiney, and smelling of the sterile plastic that they were wrapped in, we were not that much different then them. We, as new firmen, were fresh out of the packaging as well and had no idea what lay ahead.

Our helmets tell stories that you cant hear. They will tell you of the Currey brothers and Joe Lindsey. They will tell you about Chief Lane, Jeff Rathburn and Joel Lydecker. There are those that will talk of Tom Grover, Buckwalter, and Sallas. Look on top of any firefighters head and you'll hear about missed meals, lost sleep, forgotten friends and family and forgone relationships. You'll hear of  people dying in our arms, dead bodies, and things we want to forget. Listen closly enough and you'll get an earfull of the fun we have at work, of firehouse cooks, dinner table debates, water baloon fights and FMED's(firefighter made explosive devices...its a joke)

Scorched, scarred ,stinkey and waterlogged from searing heat, choking smoke, endless downpours, long thursday nights and even longer training eveolutions our helmets have seen us cry, puke, sweat and bleed. they have protected us from flowerpots, thrown bricks, ceiling fans, well meaning firmen holding wayward axes(its happened) drywall, glass, birdshit, the contents of peoples attics, falling air conditioners, overhead doors, doorframes that are not to code (to short) and of course fire.

To anyone else our helmets are worth a thousand words but to us they are a liftime of memories, a career of hard work and all that seperates us from disaster