Day 9

    I'm sorry that I am a day late on posting this but I had a lot of things going through my mind over the last day. I have received many comments from everyone telling me how proud they are of what I am doing. I do appreciate your thoughts and feelings but, I feel that I need to say this. This journey that I am on is not about me nor is it about the great guys that I am sharing this trip with. The people that I feel you need to be proud of is the women and men that I have had the utmost honor of meeting and being able to write about. They are the real hero's. They have battled and won or stood beside a person during their battle or, they have lost someone very close to them. How about those battling cancer and not only having lost their homes or jobs but, the very people that they thought were friends. The people going through cancer treatments alone because they have no one else. My thought is they are the ones to be proud of. They are the reason we do this. I write about them to give you an idea about the people in the communities that I am visiting. We have them in all of our communities. This is the time we really need to look back and say hey.....what happened to that sense of pride of our neighborhoods, communities, cities, or even counties for that part. I feel we need to get back to where we care about those in our communities. We need to share our love with everyone and put others first in our lives.
       Yesterday was a very long day for us. We were up at 5am to start our drive to Ponca City, OK from Hurst, TX. For those of you that dont know where Hurst is, its between Ft Worth and Dallas. When leaving Hurst we had to make a slight detour to a school. Our movie star on the tour has a sister that is a teacher there. We made a special trip to see a little girl named Esther. She is in 5th grade and is battling Leukemia. She misses alot of school because of this. The whole school was outside to greet us when we pulled in with the Garland Fire Department. It was very touching to see all the kids out there supporting their classmate. We brought her up to sign the truck and do some pictures with her. Then Dave spoke to the audience of teachers, administrators, volunteers, and children. Esther's parents were there also. I have said this before, children are our hardest calls to make as a fire fighter. It isn't any easier as a Guardian. Because we know what they are going through from stories we have heard from others. She was in great spirits. Godspeed Esther, I hope and pray that you beat it.
       After the visit we hit the road heading north. Both Mac and Tony spent the next 4-5 hours riding in the open cab of Karen up to Blackwell, OK. During that stretch we did hit some traffic thanks to the great guys in Law Enforcement in OK. They had a chase and caught an escapee from Louisiana. So we finally reached Blackwell somewhere around 330pm. We stopped at the fire station for a brief second then was in a parade down main street. It reminded me of when I lived in Portland, TN. Blackwell is a small town with approx. 8000 people in it and there were a lot of people lining the streets for our parade. Adults and kids alike. They held a little ceremony and then we greeted the 20 or so survivors in the community. A little girl wanted to sign the truck and I asked if she was signing in honor of someone or in memory of. She told me that she wanted to sign for her mom who has cancer and was too stressed out to make it to the parade. The girl who must have been around 9 or 10 showed her mom the respect and returned that unconditional love to her mom by walking to the parade just to be able to sign her moms name. The Deputy Chief was standing by my side and asked where she lived because he was going to head over there and check in on her. Thats a community leader wanting to take care of his community. Thats the message that we are bringing. It gave me a real sense of pride. After the event we went back to the Blackwell Fire Department where they fed us a great dinner. Thank you Blackwell, it was great.