ARCHIVES - News stories from utah

Written by Pat Reavy, Deseret news
WEST VALLEY CITY — Almost like a band hitting the road, a group of Utah firefighters left for a 16-city tour Saturday, complete with T-shirts to sell in each city.
But rather than playing a concert in each city, the firefighters will be raising money for the families of New York City firefighters who lost their lives in the World Trade Center attack. Money will also be raised to help replace the 60 pieces of fire equipment lost

The 10 firefighters making the trip held a kickoff event Saturday at the E Center and left immediately after the women's hockey game between the United States and Canadian National teams.

The group will head to Appleton, Wis., first to pick up the fire engine they will be driving cross-country. After stops in Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City and Denver, the firefighters will be back in West Valley next Saturday to raise more funds.



From there, it's off to Portland, Ore., and a trip down the West Coast before making their way to New York City to make a presentation of their collected funds Nov. 12, said West Valley Fire Capt. Bob Fitzgerald. The tour is sponsored by Dodge. It's expected to take about 3 1/2 weeks to complete.

In each city, the firefighters will be selling T-shirts, asking for donations and auctioning off items. The goal is to get each individual to donate $9.11 and each business to donate $350, or one dollar for every rescue worker lost in the attack.

Locally, Utahns can make donations to the "Fallen Fund" through Zions Bank. All the merchandise being auctioned off was donated by fire departments across the Wasatch Front.

Fitzgerald is optimistic about the success of the tour, noting the firefighters have already raised $20,000 just in Utah. "Hopefully we'll do quite well," he said.

As for the tour bus, or in this case the fire engine, Fitzgerald admits it's not the easiest way to travel across the country. "(The truck) can be measured in gallons per mile rather than miles per gallon," he said half-jokingly.


9/11/01 pulled us together

By Lee Benson
Deseret Morning News
Published: Sunday, Sept. 12, 2004 12:00 a.m. MDT
It was the darkest chapter of our generation, and yet, as the third anniversary of the Day of Infamy was observed Saturday, there were plenty of remembrances of a time when the country pulled together in response to the destruction and dying that was 9/11/2001.
In West Valley City, Fire Department Capt. Bob Fitzgerald remembered a country flooded by flags. From sea to shining sea they waved, on the sides of barns, hanging from porches, attached to clothes lines and antennas of pickup trucks.
And he should know. He drove from sea to shining sea to see them.
This isn't the first time the story of Bob Fitzgerald's 10,000-mile journey has been told, but its retelling should be mandatory at this time of year, especially as time threatens to erode the memories of all the good produced by the 9/11 tragedy.
Bob remembers that it started as "this hare-brained scheme."
He saw a report on the news just days after the terrorist attacks in New York about the firefighters who had lost their lives in the rubble and about the many fire engines that had been destroyed.
He went to bed that night and couldn't sleep, his mind racing with the nagging thought that there must be something the Utah fraternity of firefighters could do to help.
As he was tossing and turning, he came up with the idea of driving a fire engine cross-country to raise funds for the fallen.
The next morning, he was on the phone to Pearce Manufacturing in Appleton, Wis., one of the companies West Valley City buys its firetrucks from. When the Pearce people enthusiastically offered a new fire engine for the trek, the idea suddenly had wheels.
Next came a donation of two vans as support vehicles from West Valley Dodge and a motor home from Ardell Brown R.V. In short order, Dodge dealerships across the United States offered their parking lots as locations where the "Fallen Fund" crew could set up to sell their T-shirts, badges and commemorative coins and solicit outright donations.
For 30 days from mid-October to mid-November in 2001, the Fallen Fund caravan, staffed by a rotating group of Wasatch Front firefighters taking time off without pay, crisscrossed America, stopping in 16 major cities. They were in Phoenix the day Game 7 of the World Series was played. They were in West Hollywood, Calif., for Halloween. They were in Nashville the night of the Country Music Awards Show.
And, finally, they were in New York City with $140,000 they had collected from caring, selfless Americans who chipped in fives, tens and advances from their Visas and MasterCards along the way.
Not only that, by the time they got to Ground Zero, Pearce Manufacturing agreed to donate a brand new $240,000 fire engine, on behalf of the Fallen Fund Tour, to the firefighters in Manhattan.
It is almost surreal now for Capt. Fitzgerald to remember back to a time when people put regular life on hold and rushed to the aid of others.
It was an event he wishes had never happened and an experience he hopes he'll never forget.
"We put that whole trip together in about nine days," he said. "We saw the country really pull together. It was almost like there were no classes. The rich were nice to the poor, and the poor were nice to the rich. It was a real education, that trip. Everyone wanted to help, and I know I've never seen so many flags."
The fire captain paused before adding, "There for a while, we were the united states."