THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 29, 1996 TAG: 9603280163
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Over Easy
SOURCE: Jo-Ann Clegg
LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines
When Chesapeake firefighters Frank Young and John Hudgins Jr. were laid to rest last Friday and Saturday, hundreds of fire, police and rescue personnel from as far away as Washington state and Canada came to pay tribute.
So did hundreds of people in Hampton Roads who knew them only from grainy photos in newspapers and not-quite-crisp videotapes on the television screen.
Their deaths - sudden, unexpected and tragic - stunned Hampton Roads with an impact that few events have had in recent years.
Deaths among firefighters happen in other cities in the middle of the night: cities with skyscrapers and ancient tenements, illegally operated clubs and densely packed high-rise projects.
In theory, firefighters do not lose their lives on crisp, clear Monday mornings battling a blaze at a strip shopping center in a sprawling community where family farms still nestle next to newly built homes and intricate highway systems have sprung up to accommodate giant shopping centers and neatly landscaped office parks.
Or at least they didn't until the events of last week proved that theory to be very wrong.
The deaths of the two men, trapped side by side under a collapsed roof, triggered days of stunned mourning. At week's end, funeral processions offered the whole Hampton Roads community an opportunity to show respect, say a final thank you and shed the tears which had been so close to the surface.
That so many police, fire and rescue personnel came from across the United States and Canada to honor Young and Hudgins surprised many in the community, but few in the profession.
That so many ordinary citizens were deeply touched by the firefighters' deaths may have surprised some in the profession, but few in the community.
There is a warm feeling in most of us for the men and women who are willing to risk their lives when a cigarette is dropped into a full trash can, a chimney cleaning is neglected or a child finds a book of matches carelessly left within his reach.
We know them best as they race past in a flash of red lights and a blur of sounds, or as we see them on television installing smoke detectors for those too poor or frail to do the job themselves.
We see them at shopping centers and schools, showing off their equipment and teaching our kids to stop, drop and roll.
Last weekend we saw them in another context, mourning with us the loss of one of their own.
I was among the many who lined the route as 38-year-old Frank Young's body was carried from his small Chesapeake church northward to a Virginia Beach cemetery.
It took more than half an hour for the procession to pass, time to pause and reflect on those in the procession and those who also were observing it.
Young mothers, pushing strollers or holding tots close to them, watched quietly as the long line of emergency vehicles passed. Small children, normally exuberant at such a display, seemed to sense that this parade was different from the others, that silence was expected.
A pair of SPSA workers, surprised to find the procession passing the fast food restaurant where they had just eaten their lunch, stood uncomfortably self-conscious almost as if they were new recruits at parade rest.
Nearby, two young men - one Asian, one African-American - watched in respectful silence as the community paid tribute to a public servant most never knew.
Grim-faced uniformed police officers stood outside Kempsville's 4th Precinct, realizing better than most the fine line that exists between a safe return to family and a life lost in service to others.
A man in the line of moving southbound traffic pulled into the safety of a long turn lane and looked on sadly as the cortege moved slowly north.
For more than half an hour the trucks and squads, passenger cars and motorcycles passed. Shiny new equipment from cities and counties that want - and can pay for - the latest and best. Aging engines bought second hand, with the proceeds from fish fries and barbecues put on by the farmers and teachers, barbers and shop owners who volunteer to operate them.
They came from Alexandria and Melfa; Bloxom and Charlottesville; Edenton and Whaleyville, the Navy bases and the Virginia Department of Forestry as Young's own truck, Chesapeake Engine 3, bore his body toward its final resting place.
From inside each truck, men and women stared straight ahead or glanced briefly at the crowd. They, too, were grim-faced. They, too, were lost in their own thoughts.
As the procession was drawing to an end, an impatient driver pulled around a line of cars waiting along a side street and attempted to pull his personal luxury car into the intersection. A nearby police officer waved him back.
When the officer turned away the man tried again to pull out. The officer returned to the intersection. This time he left no doubt that the car would stay where it was until the cortege had passed.
The driver sat glumly, ignoring the procession and the pointed looks from others who lined the route. Beside him a blond woman flipped idly through a book of restaurant coupons, also ignoring the stares and the passing tribute.
My initial reaction, like that of most who witnessed the scene, was disgust. Later I realized that pity was probably more appropriate.
Pity for two people so caught up in their own needs and wants that there was no room, no time, in their lives to join in the shared grief of a community paying tribute to one who had given his life. by CNB