My sister Brooke, and I, along with a team passionate to the cause are each running the Utah Valley Marathon in dedication to our father, Steve Hermanson. We are also working on getting a fundraiser put together for the University of Utah Burn Camp Programs. The Burn Camps were established to support burn patients with the personal challenges associated with surviving a burn accident. These programs provide a safe atmosphere with other survivors, firefighters, and care givers to begin the healing process. Attendees are placed in the camps specific programs based on age, and social needs. These programs promote self-esteem building, peer to peer interaction, and fun. The camps give burn victims the tools to discovering the recovery process. Here is the website if you want to check it out: http://healthcare.utah.edu/burncenter/burncamp/
Our father and his coworkers at Fire Station 11 have loved to be a part of these camps. Not only do they want to save victims from fires, they want to help victims that suffer from the aftermath of these fires.
Our father saved many lives as a fire captain/paramedic and served on the Salt Lake City Fire Department for over 37 years. He also taught paramedic classes and training classes for the fire department and served on Solitude Ski Patrol, Life Flight, and Air Med. Everything he did in his life was about saving and touching the lives of others! Sadly the last years of his life he suffered from depression and unfortunately in the end, the depression won the battle. If any of you are suffering from depression, please reach out to your loved ones for help! They only want the best for you and would do anything to help you through these hard times! This is something Brooke and I have wished for so badly, that our dad would have let us known what he was going through. If only we could have been there for him!! But we have learned that you can't change the past, you can only make the furture better. In sharing this with you Brooke and I pray and hope that we can better the future of the lives of others. This unfortunate event has been the hardest thing Brooke and I have ever had to deal with in our lives, but we have learned that through the strength of our Savior we can get through anything! "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." Phillippians 4:13
Our dad had a great passion for running and he instilled that passion in my sister and I. That is why my sister and I want to dedicate this race to our father and honor the fire department that he served on while running this race.
Our firefighters do a great service for our communities and are willing to sacrifice their own lives for the sake of others. This poem has greatly touched Brooke and I, in that it demonstrates all that they do for us! I hope that it inspires you as much as it has us!
I Wish You Could
I wish you could see the sadness of a business-man as his livelihood goes up in flames, or that family returning home, only to find their house and belongings damaged or destroyed.
I wish you could know what it is like to search a burning bedroom for trapped children, flames rolling above your head, your palms and knees burning as you crawl, the floor sagging under your weight as the kitchen beneath you burns.
I wish you could comprehend a wife’s horror at 3 a.m. as I check her husband of 40 years for a pulse and find none. I start CPR anyway, hoping to bring him back, knowing intuitively that it is too late. But wanting his wife and family to know everything possible was done.
I wish you knew the unique smell of burning insulation, the taste of soot filled mucus, the feeling of intense heat through your turnout gear, the sound of flames crackling, the eeriness of being able to see absolutely nothing in dense smoke ~ sensations that I have become too familiar with.
I wish you could understand how it feels to go to work in the morning after having spent most of the night, hot and soaking wet at a multiple alarm fire.
I wish you could read my mind as I respond to a building fire. “Is this a false alarm or a working, breathing fire? How is the building constructed? What hazards await me? Is anyone trapped? Or to an EMS call, “What is wrong with the patient?” Is it minor or life threatening? Is the caller really in distress or is he or she waiting for us with a 2x4 or a gun?
I wish you could be in the emergency room as a doctor pronounces dead the beautiful five-year-old girl that I tried to save during the past 25 minutes. Who will never go on her first date or say the words “I love you, Mommy” again.
I wish you could know the frustration I feel in the cab engine, the driver with his foot pressing down hard on the pedal, my arm tugging again and again at the air horn chain, as you fail to yield the right of way at an intersection or in traffic. When you need us, however, your first comment upon our arrival will be, “It took you forever to get here!”
I wish you could know my thoughts as I help extricate a girl of teenage years from the mangled remains of her automobile. “What if this was my sister, my girlfriend, or a friend? What were her parents’ reaction going to be when they opened the door to find a police officer with hat in hand?
I wish you could know how it feels to walk in the back door and greet my parents and family, not having the heart to tell them that I nearly did not come back from the last call I was on. I wish you could feel the hurt as people verbally and sometime physically, abuse us or belittle what I do, or as they express their attitudes or “It will never happen to me.”
I wish you could know the brotherhood and self-satisfaction of helping save a life, or preserving someone’s property, of being there in time of crisis, or creating order from total chaos.
I wish you could understand what it feels like to have a little boy tugging at your arm and asking. "Is Mommy okay?" Not even being able to look in his eyes without tears from your own and not knowing what to say. Or to hold back a long-time friend who watches his buddy having rescue breathing done on him as they take him away in the ambulance. You know all along he did not have his seat belt on ~ Sensations I am too familiar with.
Unless you have lived with this kind of life, you will probably never truly understand or appreciate who I am, we are, or what our job really means to us
……I WISH YOU COULD.
Although our father cannot physically be a part of saving lives anymore, we want his passion to carry on through the lives of others!
If any of you are interested in pledging money for every mile that we run in the Utah Valley Marathon please contact me at:
phone#: 801-201-4120
email: brittanyaste@hotmail.com
Also you can go into any Zions Bank to make a donation. When you go into Zions Bank, make sure you tell them Brooke Etherington's name so that they can find the donation account. You can also click on the donation button below and make a donation.
Please forward this message on to all of your friends and family! Our goal is to get this out to as many people as possible.
Sincerely,
Brittany Aste & Brooke Etherington
