In his Opening Address on Wednesday, Chief Bobby Halton, FDIC International education director and editor in chief of Fire Engineering, highlighted the concept of “honor to duty” and described how it has served as a thread that has connected the fire service and other uniformed services with ancient times and will continue to connect them with the future.
Halton extended an invitation to the audience: “As a community that has answered the call to duty, let’s celebrate the qualities and virtues that undergird our profession and other uniformed services. Let us revel in natural goodness, honor, principles, and morality. Above all, let us honor duty, which compels men and women in uniform to be honest and forthright.”
Examples of individuals who have preserved the continuity of these qualities and virtues Halton presented included the following:
• The king of Uruk (the part of the world then known as Iraq), who details in The Epic of Gilgamesh, his “unrelenting efforts to complete his duties both sacred and ordinary.” The Epic, written on clay tablets, is considered the first record of the written word.
• World War II’s Lt. Col. James “Maggie” Megellas, the most decorated officer in the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division (and his H company).
• World War II’s George S. Patton, American task force commander of the third Army, who wrote in his diary, “I hope that, whatever comes up, I shall be able to do a full duty ….”
• The “thousands upon thousands of patriots who fought and died to defend their countries and liberate others” because they knew it to be their duty.
• Bob “Bullfighter” Murray, a 5 Points junior firefighter at the age of 15 and an Army enlistee in the Viet Nam War at the age of 19, who jeopardized his life to save his fellow soldiers.
• Lt. Timmy “Jobs” Stackpole, Lt. James Blackmore, and Capt. Scott LaPiedra, Fire Department of New York, who responded to a four-alarm fire in a Brooklyn rowhouse on June 5, 1998. They entered the well-involved building to rescue a trapped woman. Without warning, the floor collapsed. They were trapped in fire for almost a half-hour, being burned alive. Lt. Blackmore died at the scene. Capt. LaPiedra suffered serious burns; he died 29 days later. Jobs, burned over 30 percent of his body, was near death for many days and in the burn unit for 66 days. Although his injuries qualified him for a retirement pension, he returned to full duty in March 2001 after years of painful surgeries and skin grafts. He was promoted to captain in September 2001 and was among the first to arrive at the World Trade Center site on 9/11. He led his crew into 2 World Trade Center. Searchers found his body a week later. Today, Timmy Stackpole’s Foundation’s mission statement reflects his beliefs, dedication, and spirit: “It is our God-given mission that in times of trouble, grief, sorrow, trial and disaster, each of us has an obligation, a duty to reach out to help others, in any way we can.”
All these individuals, Halton said, exhibited the attitudes, courage, achievements, selflessness, mores, and principles comparable to those of the brave men and women in the audience and their counterparts in other uniformed services. Thus, we continue that long line of ordinary citizens, firefighters, who heard that call to duty and were compell