Holidays are all about family for area firefighters

ALBANY — For most people, Christmas morning means gathering around the Christmas tree with family, waiting to see what treasures Santa dropped from his sleigh, or gathering with loved ones for a holiday meal and good cheer, or just simply relaxing. But for a certain segment of the population, Christmas is another day at the office — another day to be on the ready to go where duty calls.

For many of the men and woman working in public safety — as 911 operators, police officers, EMTs, firefighters — days like Thanksgiving and Christmas are just another day of duty, another day of waiting at the station in the hope of preventing tragedy.

Such is the case for members of the Albany and Lee County fire departments, whose schedules often dictate that rather than being at home enjoying their holiday with their parents, husbands, wives or children, they are at work, ready to spring into action.

“I’m going to tell you man, it’s strenuous, or at least it can be,” said Keithon Hayslip, an AOE with the AFD. “When I first came to the fire department, maybe eight, nine, years ago, the first couple of years, because I was on night shift then, I had to work on Christmas.”

A conversation with any area firefighter with multiple years of service will reveal that working on the holidays is just a fact of life. Fortunately, however, with schedules of 24 hours on, 48 hours off, that are virtually etched in stone, everyone working in those departments knows when they’ll be working and can make plans to ensure they get time with their families, even if that means celebrating on a different day altogether.

“They have a schedule,” said AFD Chief Ron Rowe. “They can tell you next year what days they’ll be working, because it doesn’t change.

“One of the things, and I guess all of us have something like this, but my dad was a firefighter for 30 years, retired from here as a captain. I’ve been here 31 years. My oldest son’s a firefighter in Statesboro. So, just for an example, our Christmas schedule, we have three different days this year, the 18^th, 19^th, and 20^th that we travel to different locations to celebrate with in-laws, family, etc. So we have to schedule it. Sometimes it’s the 26^th, (but) in our case this year it’s the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th, and then we’ll have our own personal family thing on a different day.

“So you start lining this up way in advance. But it does become, unfortunately for us, a norm and we just work the schedule.”

Knowing that schedule and being able to make plans, however, doesn’t change the fact of having to work on holidays. But, as it turns out, most firefighters see the holidays as a special time, where they in fact do get to spend time with their loved ones.

“We have two different families,” explained Rowe. “We’ve got our family life away from here, and then we’ve got our family life here. Those holidays are times when they actually come together more often than not.

“During the holiday season is when you can actually blend that and say, ‘Hey, these are times to celebrate, times for all of us to be happy.’ And you know we bring everybody together. We eat meals together. We allow (visiting family members) to stay a little longer around the stations.”

Hayslip concurs.

“Chief allows us to have our family come up during operational hours, and we can spend time with them there. And we do a lot of cooking together,” he said. “The shift before we plan ahead, get us a menu set up. We’ve got some great cooks here, at every station. We’re fortunate to have a few working with us here. We cook, we eat together, we watch movies and we talk about things. And we spend time not only with our family but with families that come up here to see their families. It’s very family-oriented.”

“It’s like the Griswolds,” Rowe chimed in. “Everybody comes.”

“It’s nice man, it’s nice. It doesn’t make it that difficult to deal with, I can tell you that, when you’re working with a great group of women and guys. And so that makes it very enjoyable to work on holidays,” Hayslip said.

Such is the case in Lee County, too, where days like Thanksgiving and Christmas become days to celebrate en masse.

“We try to do things (together),” said Jason Warren, a veteran firefighter and EMT in Lee County. “At Thanksgiving, we got the whole shift together. Director (Wesley) Wells let us bring everybody, including the EMS side, which works a little bit different schedule than what we work (24 on, 72 off).

“The shift that was on for 24 hours, we all came over and did turkey dinner together, and we invited families, too. So it ended up being a pretty good group of folks.”

“We do the best we can to make our work environment conducive to a family environment, so that people don’t have that stress on them about being away from their families,” said Rowe. “Because they are away 24 hours minimum on those holidays. As a whole department, we take it seriously enough that we plan ahead of time to say, ‘Hey, guys, you know during this period, y’all can do these things.’”

Even though family is encouraged to visit the stations during the holidays, the fact that many of the firefighters, especially those with young children, want to be home on Christmas morning still exists. Because of that notion of firefighters as family, that wish is often fulfilled.

Such was the case with Hayslip those first years of working Christmas. And he has not forgotten how much the kindness of his brothers and sisters meant to him.

“I was fortunate to get a guy to allow me to be at home with my family for about four hours,” he said. “We’re allotted this swap time, and I was able to spend time with my kids for maybe 4-5 hours or so. It was precious time for us.”

That same practice holds in Lee County, and after having co-workers help him be with his family, Warren said he now pays that forward.

“A lot of the old-timers like myself, I’ve been doing it for a couple of years now. If there’s some firefighters that have younger children, we’ll hold over for a couple of hours so they can do Christmas with the kids and come in about 10,” he said. “We’ve had our opportunity, so we try to pass it on to some of them and give them a chance to be with their kids on Christmas.”

Warren, who also grew up the son of a firefighter, knows how much that little bit of extra time on Christmas morning matters not only to the firefighters but to their families as well.

“Usually, we would just do ours earlier,” he said. “I kind of got that from my dad. We’d always get up about 4 or 5 in the morning and do the Santa Claus thing, open presents, eat a little bit of breakfast.

“I don’t remember a time without it just because I was young when dad started, and we’re fourth-generation firemen so it goes back to my grandma’s dad. It’s always been (that way). I remember seeing my granddad on Christmas Day going to the station, things like that.”

Like Warren and Rowe, many who chose to be a part of the fire service, and other such disciplines, come from families that have always been in public service and their perspectives are informed by their pasts.

“As a kid, I remember coming to see my dad on a lot of holidays and some of the guys that are still here now they remember me when I was younger,” said Hayslip. “But it was a good thing. What else is better than being able to come to work and do something that you love and get paid for it at the same time?”

Seeing their schedules as “normal” is something many of those in public service seem to share.

“When I was young, I didn’t know anything was different because, again, it was our norm,” said Rowe. “And then growing up and seeing it, it was like, ‘OK, now I understand why we did it that way.’ Because we just didn’t think it was any different. It’s kind of like when you grow up poor. You don’t know you’re poor until you get outside of that and realize ‘we didn’t have any money.’”

The idea of normal ends up extending to the families of firefighters as well, who are, according to those in service, very accepting of the sacrifices that have to be made in order to take care of the community.

“They have to (understand),” said Derrick Eldridge, who has been with the AFD for eight years. “There’s times when we work Christmas Day and in order for me to celebrate with my family, we have to celebrate Christmas Day on Dec. 26. That’s when they open their presents sometimes.

“So, it is what it is, basically. They understand that and they accept that. It’s just part of the job. Even though sometimes it may be hard, you just come to the realization that you’ve got to accept it and go about the best that you can.”

With 27 years in the AFD, Assistant Chief Sebon Burns concurred, saying most family members understand and are willing to be flexible.

“The thing about it, we know the schedule and our families know the schedule, too,” said Burns. “We have to coordinate. If we know we’re working Christmas, we probably do something with the family, have Christmas dinner, the day before.”

While the holidays offer a chance for the firefighters to join together with both of their “families,” many of them say a big part of dealing with the difficulty of working on Thanksgiving and Christmas comes from the fact that they are public servants and have devoted themselves to helping others.

“For myself, I just have the passion for the job — to be a servant to the people of this Dougherty County area,” said Michael Styles, a captain with AFD who has 29 years of service. “My main purpose is just, when they’re in a time of need, to make their lives less stressful. We never know what we’re going to face when we get there. Pretty much we work as a team, looking out for each other, minimize as much damage as possible and make those folks’ lives a lot better.”

“I can speak for me; I can’t speak for anybody else on this, but I fully believe that we’re here to help each other while we’re here on Earth. And one of the blessings we get is, every single day we come to work, we get that opportunity,” added Rowe. “I say a lot of times, when people have their worst days and their lives are falling apart, we get to be the ones to help put it back together. And there is just no greater reward than being able to say I helped somebody get back to their norm, or better in some cases.”

Warren agreed, saying that although most firemen, law enforcement and EMTs don’t talk about it much or “beat their chest” about what they do, they do get satisfaction from serving others.

“Me and my daughter were talking about it the other night, and you can near about count on a kitchen fire on Christmas Day or Thanksgiving Day, sometimes Christmas Eve, just because of the amount of people cooking,” said Warren. “But to be able to go in and try to take care of them and help them as much as possible to work through something that to them is extremely traumatic, it’s fulfilling.

“I thoroughly enjoy my job in the fire service. I look forward to coming to work. We don’t have a clue what’s going to happen. But that feeling of being on the scene and helping somebody, knowing that you’ve helped someone through something that’s extremely traumatic, that to them is like the end of the world, it’s a phenomenal feeling.”

Although the vast majority of firefighters will say they don’t do what they do for any special recognition, they say that it lifts their hearts when they feel supported by the community they serve. And that feeling of support is especially noticed during the holidays.

“Year ‘round we have tremendous support from the community — unbelievable support,” said Rowe. “There’s no way we could do what we do without their support. Everywhere we go, there’s just an outpouring.

“Around the holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, things like that especially, there are groups of people that like to bring cakes by or cookie trays, things of that nature, and it’s their way of saying thanks. And we’re extremely appreciative when people do that.”

“That’s the best time of the year,” added Styles. “We get that support from citizens. They come in and say happy holidays.”

Warren said the same thing occurs in Lee County, where residents regularly stop by to say thank you and drop off the occasional goodie.

“A lot of the churches, they’ll bring food by, a lot of cookies,” he said. “We get a lot of churches that they’ll either outright cook something for us and bring it to the station, or whenever they have their Thanksgiving dinners or Christmas dinners, whatever is left over they’ll bring it by the station and drop it off to us.

“It’s great. To get people to go out of their way and bring that to strangers they don’t know, yeah that’s really good stuff.”

As much as it fills them with pride to know that people are thinking of them during the holidays, many of the firefighters are quick to point out that praise it not a motivation. Quite the contrary.

“What they don’t realize is, it’s really just an honor to be able to do it, to serve the community,” said Rowe. “We appreciate them stopping by and doing whatever they want to, but at the same time, we want to thank them, because if they didn’t support us, we couldn’t do what we’re doing.”