If it takes a village to raise a child

–and dear old granny told me this was so, not Hillary Clinton–then it makes perfect sense that It takes a battalion to replace a Dad...



Via Legacy Matters

FDNY Battalion Chief promised to keep the memory of John Bellew alive for his children with stories and pictures. Monsignor Jack O'Keefe whose father was a firefighter killed in the line of duty gave the eulogy. He said he was raised by the NYC Fire Department and firefighters would give him stories about dad for decades. Clearly, he expected the firefighters to do no less for the Bellew children.

I'm not really one to jump on the sentimentality train for firefighters and their families. Not because they don't suffer or deserve our care, but because so many representations of firefighters, post 9-11, have turned them into Men and Women of Marble. (If you're from the south, "Man of Marble" may ring a bell as an inside term for Robert E. Lee. Not because of all the statues, but because the reality of the Man has become so separate from the mythology.)

So for me, I was surprised at the candor or the Monsignor's practical humanity mixed with tribal duty. The picture of Eileen Bellew is one of those calculated to elicit a gulp in many. But the downstream consequence of several hundred men and women taking that boy aside to make the gauzy memory of a father more real and, hopefully, bravely human and accessible and therefore capable of emulation... Well, that I'll gulp for.