It would be great if firefighters across the country had the guarantee that they would be making enough money to support their family right from the get-go, but that's not the case.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
As the member of a firefighter family myself, supporting the widowed families of rescue workers is an important, personal cause of mine.
Firefighters are essential to the safety and security of our local communities. We owe it to these men and women to provide them with better training and equipment so they can do their jobs more effectively and safely.
Once you have a firefighter in your family, your family and the families from his crew become one big extended family.
Firefighters go where they're needed, sometimes ignoring the dangers even when no one is inside a burning building to be saved.
My charity is in the business of helping firefighters in any way that we can. For instance, after 9/11 we were the second-fastest charity to raise and distribute money to the widows and surviving family members of the 343 firefighters who died that day.
The will to work of everyone in the country is the best guarantee of national survival.
We all know of families who have obligated themselves for more than they could pay. There is a world of heartache behind such cases.
Having dealt with a lot of real firefighters, I know there are a lot of guys who, for lack of a better term, become addicted to the grief because it has kept them connected to these guys that they felt responsible for having lost.
When it comes to charities, there's a lot of fraud.
One thing that's great about firefighters: If they don't have the equipment they desperately need, they don't have the help, they don't care. They'll do it on their own.