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POLICE AND FIRE, MEN AMONG MEN
Yes, and there are some women too, like Chief Gumble in Hebron and more in other departments, often overlooked just by the titles of policeman and fireman, created in times before women were allowed to perform such functions in the culture. They work for modest salaries and benefits, for the most part, and they work tirelessly without complaint on shifts when most of everyone else is blessedly asleep. Their families try to fit into many times impossible schedules, and then there’s the ‘excuse me, I have to go save a life’ kind of thing that can insert itself uncomfortably at any time and in any place.
The City of Lake Geneva is blessed with uncommonly superlative police and fire personnel. The fire department just lost one of those men, and thousands came to his funeral. What is it that these men and women want? Other than your support, some good equipment, water mains that work, and so on? They need a place, or even places, for them to work out of and lie in wait within. They need places that are not too far away, places that are rather non-descript, but places very carefully selected for a variety of reasons the public will never slow down long enough to study, puzzle over, or understand.
The writer of this article was a police officer for seven years and was given the California Medal of Valor when badly injured, not on police duty but fighting a fire because nobody else could get through the conflagration to fight it from the inside. I did not and did not see that afternoon’s work as one of valor. I never had a thought about it until Ronald Reagan showed up to pin the medal on my chest. I was just like the police and fire personnel in Lake Geneva. It was not only my job I was doing, it was also my calling, it was my release and my joy to be allowed to truly do good, to act bravely (when I had not always done so in life), to know inside me that I wasn’t working for money or because I could not quit (like I could have in the military). I accepted the medal for myself and the two firemen who’d been hurt trying to rescue me but got on medals for that. You can’t really share a decoration like that, but everyone, including them, knows what it means.
The police and fire personnel and equipment need a new home over on Edwards Boulevard. Yes, the land will cost about two million, and the facility a few million more. What they have right now is sadly cramped and not properly positioned to take care of the city’s growing population. Some members of the city council got the purchase kicked down the road for all the wrong reasons, and the community needs to stand up, argue them down, and then get this mission completed. The GSR staff didn’t want the new police boat. We thought it was too much money for too little use…but so what? Who are you going to call when you are in trouble? Ghostbusters? No, you’re going to call these guys and gals, and no matter who you are, what your past is like, and what your current situation is. They will come, and they’ll come fast and in great numbers because that is what they do…and what they are made of. Let’s get behind them, as they will never let us get in front of them.
