As a volunteer, I give my time to protect life,limb and property. I do this with no reservations or complaints. All those those that volunteer are doing this for the same reasons....they want to help.
That being said, I grow so weary of hearing every single day how volunteers are not real firefighters...or in this case, volunteers have no business in a "union" town. Last I checked, we live in a free state and can travel to any part of these United States, "Union town" or not.
I have heard from several people in the fire service, both paid and volunteer, that the City of Charleston do not want our volunteer apparatus in "their" city, on Apparatus day, when we are supposed to be coming together as ONE. This is because Charleston is a "union" town. I guess whoever decided that we would be "smearing" it in the face of the "paid departments" never once considered that us volunteers could possibly be attending to support the paid departments.
I am the daughter of a retired paid, union firefighter. My father served the City of St. Albans proudly for 20+ years. He also stood along side his brother fire fighters at the 130th Air National Guard unit at Yeagar airport as a member of our fine military and as a career firefighter, where he rose to the rank of Deputy Chief. So, I challenge any "paid" firefighter to prove to me that I am trying to smear anything in their face, just because I choose to be a fire fighter for free. I will be a very proud supporter of paid fire fighters for the rest of my life.
We are all in the same business, whether we are paid or not. We all recieve the same training, just not the same compensation. We ARE firefighters, we proudly serve. We are supposed to be brothers and sisters.
I haven't forgotten that.
