Rescue Captain Dick Lemay has a wispy voice and squint-eyed way of speaking that's immediately reminiscent of Clint Eastwood if Clint Eastwood was a nicer guy and shorter. As far as legends go, few are more revered. He went to Vietnam as an 11 Bravo Infantryman in 1969, and then spent 36 years serving the public on Rescue 1. He treated every patient with respect even when they did not return the favor, pulled money out of his own pocket for people truly in need, and basically taught the EMS side of the job to practically every new guy hired in the last thirty years. It's been estimated he went on over 30,000 runs before he retired. One year later, he had to stop by Station 4 three different times to finish what turned out to be a four-hour interview. This is what he said ...
(Note to the reader. If you were a transfer guy on C-Platoon, chances are you either worked with Capt. Lemay on Rescue 1 or Lt. Tomlinson on Rescue 2. In between runs on sleepless nights, there were many stories each would share. Years later, after they were retired, one had to wonder why no one had ever written any of it down. I had an old tape recorder, and, despite having no idea what we were doing, one day Lemay showed up at the 4's and just started talking. What follows is the first interview ever done for this blog.) December 29/2016 TT: Pawtucket born and raised, right? You went to Vietnam? DL: Just before my 19th birthday they came out with the first draft lottery. My birthday was drawn number 9. It was the only lottery I ever won (laughs). Within in a month I had my draft notice, had my physical, and within two months I was at basic training. TT: What year was this? DL: 1969. I was in the Army in January in 1970. Went to Vietnam in August of '70 as an 11 Bravo Infantryman, was in the central highlands, saw some action, but not a lot compared to what other people went through in other places, and at earlier times in the war. I came home in August of '71, I got a five month early out instead of doing the full two years. I was still not even 21 when I got discharged. TT: So you made it back to Pawtucket in august of '71, so what happened then? Did you start applying for jobs? DL: No, I wasn't thinking of the FD at that time, the economy was lousy, so I started painting and roofing for my uncle. In '72 I started going to school on the GI Bill and got my associate's degree from RI junior college (CCRI). While I was there, there were some providence firefighters taking classes. I talked to them briefly, and it kind of put the idea in my head that it might be a good thing to do. Meanwhile I got a job with the city. I was working accounting which I had no interest in. Finally, I started applying for Fire Departments in '77. I did well in Central Falls, East Providence, and Pawtucket around the same time. I did well. In fact I was number one in Pawtucket and Central Falls. So, I got a letter from CF at the same time as Pawtucket, so I chose the Pawtucket job since this was where I was from. This was 1979. TT: So you came on the job in '79. At that time, were there any rescues? DL: One. TT: And it was basic life support? DL: BLS no cardiac, no advance life support. TT: Were they doing IVs? DL: No. TT: So this was a transport wagon? DL: Yes, scoop and go. Basic first aid, CPR, basic stuff TT: Did everyone go to the rescue first? Like now, where all the new guys go there to learn the job? DL: No. There were people assigned to the rescue. Guys got transferred to it. But I don't remember brand new guys getting assigned. But not long after I came on, like three months after I started, they put a second rescue in service. TT: So like 1980ish was Rescue 2. DL: Yes. 1980. TT: Do you know when Rescue 1 was put on the job? Are we talking early 1970s? DL: Oh no. before that. Way before that. They had a rescue/ambulance, whatever you want to call it, back in the 50s. But they didn't even transport. They would go to the scene and call a private ambulance to do the transport. They would treat on the scene and determine the need for transportation. TT: Now back in those days, the trucks had radios, the guys did not. DL: Right. TT: And when the rescue showed up, other than doing the basic stuff, they're not notifying hospitals, they're just going where they had to go. DL: Right. TT: They would just show up at the ER with whatever they had. So basically we're talking about stopping bleeding ... DL: Yeah. But when I came on the job, we were able to contact the hospitals. TT: Okay. Were there phones? DL: It was like a phone. In the back of the rescue. Not like a cell phone, more like a two way radio. TT: Like Emergency 51? DL: Yes. TT: Alright. Rescue 2 comes on in '80. When did you officially stay--were you on an engine company, or did you go right to rescue? DL: No, I was on Engine 5. TT: How long? DL: Four or five months. Then, when they put Rescue 2 in service, they assigned me to it because I was a new guy. They took all the junior lieutenants and took them off trucks to man the rescue. TT: So even back then there was an officer and a private. DL: Yes. They put Ladder 3 out of service to have the manning for the second rescue. TT: I imagine that was a shitshow. DL: It caused a lot of grief. TT: Ladder 3 was over at McCoy, right? DL: Yes. TT: So it was a seniority thing, right? Did they re-bid the job? DL: Yes. TT: What year do you think you were officially put on Rescue 2? DL: 1980, the year it was put in service. TT: So from 1980 on you were on rescue? DL: No. I was on Rescue 2 for a little less than two years. So some time in '82 I bid to Engine 2. and I was on Engine 2 until '84, but what was happening, in '83 they started the cardiac program. So I took that course, to be knowledgeable and up on the latest stuff. So when I got my cardiac, they kept transferring me from Engine 2 to Rescue 1, so in '84 they came out with the rescue lieutenant test and I had just enough time on the job, so I took the test and did well. TT: How old were you at this point? DL: 33? TT: Did they make everyone get their cardiac licenses? Or was it just new guys coming on? DL: After that, new guys coming on had to get it. When I took it we had the choice. TT: How many guys? DL: Original class? I would say 20. TT: So those were the guys transferred to the rescue. DL: Some were already on rescue, some like me just wanted to take it for the education and be knowledgeable. TT: So you're a lieutenant on Rescue 1 as of '84. DL: Yes. TT: And you pretty much stayed there from there on out? DL: Same station, same rescue. TT: Same shift? DL: Yes. (laughs). The rest of my career. TT: So when you made captain you didn't even have to move. DL: Nope. TT: When did you make captain? DL: Probably early '90s. TT: Now as far as the job goes, the fires in the '70s and 80s, it was a very active fire department as far as Code Reds go, and old school guys, the air tanks, I remember Chickie used to tell stories about the sponge. Is that anything you dealt with? DL: I didn't use one of those. But there were a couple of old guys that still did it that way. TT: Let's talk about the sponge. It was cut into a square... DL: Yeah, and they'd just stick it in their mouth and breathe through it, and they had some ill conceived notion that it was effective in keeping smoke out of your lungs. TT: When did the air packs come into play? DL: We already had them. When I came on the job we had them. We probably had them since the early '60s. Maybe even earlier. TT: Really? So these guys were just holding out to be hardcore. DL: Yeah. They just didn't like putting air packs on. TT: So there were still some sponge guys around. DL: Yeah, Ray Gilbert was one of them and, bless his soul, he passed away not long after leaving the job. TT: Just cooked. DL: Yeah, nice guy, too. and a hell of a firefighter. But he would just go in as far as he could with that sponge and you know, obviously you can't breathe that hot smoke, so once he hit real heat, he had to back out. TT: Let's talk about specific stories. I remember when I was with you a couple times, we'd be driving around at night, and you would bust out a couple of great stories, I mean not great, obviously they're awful, but one of them was about a massive three-decker house that caught fire, and two guys who were drinking in a bar had left the bar to get people out of the building, or let them know it was on fire... why don't you explain that story... DL: It was March of 1989. Early in the night shift. Maybe six-seven o'clock. Dark out. Rain mixed with sleet, cold, miserable night. We got a call for a fire at 167 Dexter Street and I knew the building well because it was an old tenement, three-decker cut into one room jobs, like a rooming house with a bathroom down the hall. That type of situation. Bottom of the economic ladder kind of people. A lot of them were drinkers...druggers, anyway, it was right next to the G and C Tavern which is no longer there, but anyway we pulled up and there was fire pouring out of the second-floor windows in the front side of the building. There was fire showing in like six windows. At least. There was two guys hanging out of the third-floor window on the Dexter Street side, well, actually one guy and uh, there was a fire escape. So we threw a ladder up to the escape, ran up to the third level. and meanwhile the fire is coming out of the second-floor underneath us-- TT: And rolling up the fire escape.. DL: Yes. So somebody had to put water in the second-floor window to keep us from roasting. This guy was still conscious, but he seemed disoriented and we're trying to pull him out, and there's all this hot smoke pouring out of the window behind him. TT: Thick black smoke... DL: Yeah and then all of a sudden it lit up. the smoke turned to flame-- TT: It flashed over. DL: Yup. The room flashed, and at that point he collapsed. And as I grabbed his belt to try and pull him through the window, everything came apart in my hands because he was burning up. And that's when I noticed there was a second guy behind him wrapped around his legs, and we didn't know it at the time, but they had run from the bar next door to try and help people. TT: Those were the two guys who went in to help. DL: Yep. They got trapped on the third-floor and the fire came up the stairwell behind them and rolled into the room, flashed it over, and they died right in front of us. TT: Now the story you told me was that this guy was literally--the skin was coming off. DL: Yeah I remember his fingers, the skin was melting off. And the same thing with his face. It was right in front of us. And it was horrible because we were right there but couldn't do anything to help. Then we realized he was more or less being held by the guy behind him. TT: Who was with you that night? DL: I was on Engine 2, no I was on Rescue 1. Bill Hennault was on rescue with me, but he had gone to help people that had jumped from another second-floor window. So I was on the fire escape with Ray Mathew, who was on Engine 2, and some Irish kid. Can't think of his name. anyway there was three of us on the fire escape trying to pull those guys out... TT: Now how many people died in that fire? Just those two? DL: Those two guys. and three or four others were injured. TT: Now the story was that they had left their stuff on the bar, literally their keys, their drinks-- DL: Cigarettes. On the bar. TT: And no one came back to get anything. DL: Right. TT: There was also the story involving the shooting, where a guy shot a girl, and you went against--you just walked in with the trauma bag... DL: It was outside, on the corner of Main and Vale, right down the street from our station. Sent us for a shooting. I was with Bobby Howe. We pull up and sure enough there was a girl laying in the gutter. I got out of the truck and came around the side where the victim was and there's a guy standing there holding a gun on Bobby Howe. I was a lieutenant at that time. And Bob said to me, "What do you want to do about this guy?" Then the guy took the gun and turned it on me. We were just feet apart. I said, "Well, if he wants us, he's got us. So we're gonna ignore him and help her." And that's what we did. And the engine pulled up and I told them to stay back. TT: Now this guy, what was his reaction when he saw you guys were like "We're gonna take care of this lady. You can shoot us if you want." DL: He was alternately pointing the gun at us and even threatened at one point to kill himself, put the gun under his chin. Some sort of semi-automatic assault rifle. TT: Now she was shot in the chest? DL: She was shot in the abdomen, pelvis, upper legs. He shot her eight times. TT: No shit. DL: She was 14 years old. TT: This was a straight up domestic? DL: Well, she was his girlfriend. She had his baby. He should've been charged with statutory rape long before this point. He was 23, she was 14. And she probably had the kid at 13. Anyway, she ended up paralyzed in one leg. TT: It was amazing she even lived. DL: Yeah. TT: The story I heard was that--William Shatner's "Rescue 911" got wind of this incident and they contacted downtown wanting to talk to you guys. DL: Yeah, I spoke to a lady from the show, from the west coast. They were interested in having us on, wanting to re-enact the incident. I'm not, I wasn't into going on television. (laughs) So I used the excuse, "Look this thing's still being investigated and we're not at liberty to discuss it." TT: But the real reason was you didn't really want to-- DL: I had no interest in being on TV. So anyway we got an award for that. TT: What's another one you can think of? DL: Ironic things, like we saved a guy, he was overdosed on heroin, cyanotic, complete respiratory arrest, not long to live. Gave him the Narcan, turned him around, got him to the hospital, and when he got out of the hospital, he murdered his step-father, and then he murdered another guy in a motel somewhere in Massachusetts. So after getting his life saved he killed two people. TT: Talk about a swing. One for two. Now, when you talk about the Narcan, was it already on the trucks when you got on? DL: Right from when we became cardiacs, 1983. But we used it seldom compared to now. I used more Narcan in the last two years on the job than I did the previous thirty-four. TT: No shit. DL: I mean we would occasionally get an overdose, but nothing like today. TT: Now as far as the drugs back in the day, they were sticking to coke, marijuana-- DL: Cocaine was the big--the cocaine epidemic hit this area in the early 80s. And it was carnage everywhere. Talk about fraying the fabric of society, it caused a lot of damage to families, people, you name it. The violence--I don't see the violence with the heroin like we did with cocaine. Violent crime at the housing projects, and all over the city. Terrible. The shootings. Every week. It was all based on the drug trade. Stabbings. People getting beaten, run over on purpose, cowboys robbing drug dealers... TT: The wild west. DL: Yeah. TT: As far as what you would do with someone who had too much coke-- DL: There was no antidote for that. The hospital would usually give them a Benzo. TT: Versed. DL: Yeah, Versed, Adavan, Valium, to try and smooth them out. Other than that you just had to let it run its course. And if they started seizing from a cocaine overdose, the next step was usually cardiac arrest. TT: Now, you used to tell me when I first got on the job, you used to say if somebody gets in the back of the truck and says they're gonna die, or feel like they're gonna die, chances are they're right. DL Yeah. There's a good chance. That impending doom thing is real. TT: I actually saw it with you one morning. It is a real thing. Pretty ironic that people would know their own death was coming. Now, as far as the trends in the job, cocaine in the 80s, there was cycles of things. DL: The city actually got better after this cocaine epidemic sort of went away. I mean the drug never went away, but the rampant use-- TT: The ferocity. DL: Yeah. TT: So by the early 90s things had mellowed out? DL: Yes. The city was actually better. Less violent crime, less pregnant women turning up at the ER testing positive for coke. Things got better. Then as the 90s wore on, opiates came into play more and more. Now we have an epidemic of that. Heroin, Fentanyl, synthetic opiates which you can buy on the internet, shipped from China, TT: They say the Fentanyl is 100 times more potent than morphine-- DL: Yeah well there's a thing called Carfentanil, which is even a 100 times more potent than the Fentanyl. So I mean it's just insane. It's an elephant tranquilizer. That's the only legitimate use for it in this country was to tranquilize large animals for surgery. TT: So when I was on rescue, we had just gone through the bath salts, that phase. It was quick right? I only remember a six month window of absolute freaking craziness. DL: That stuff was legal. It was a horrible drug. I mean you could walk into a store and buy it. No age limit, no nothing. The Feds kind of got that under wraps TT: I think people got scared of that stuff, it was like the first time a drug had actually scared people away from it. Especially when people began eating each other. Me and Mikey Dawson rolled up in the 1's one night and there was this tiny naked petite white girl covered in her own shit screaming nonsense like a lunatic. Howie was there. We charged her with sheets and wrapped her up like a burrito. DL: Bizarre. Seemed like a combination of hallucinogenic and central nervous system stimulant. So you're all jacked up and psychotic at the same time. TT: Not a good combo. DL: No. TT: Is there any particular run that you look back on, things you might've done different? DL: I remember a lot of the tragic ones. We had a fire, we were looking for a guy, and finally we realized we were walking over him. There was so much fire damage the plaster had fallen off the walls and ceilings, and sort of buried this guy in plaster and charcoal, charred wood, and he was staring up at us, obviously dead, and the heat had twisted his jaw into this grotesque grin, and the fire had burned most of the flesh around his mouth away, so all of his teeth were exposed, and it was like he was mocking us. This is right out of Hollywood. TT: You'll never forget that image, right? DL: Never. TT: Obviously, kid runs are awful DL: We had a kid that was 16 months old. Mom put him in the yard with the dog, and the dog got excited to see him, the dog was tethered to a post, and the dog wrapped round and round the kid, and the chain on the dog wrapped around his neck and choked him. We ran a full code, but couldn't pull him back. Also, kids pushing through screens, falling out of second and third-floor windows. TT: Did you have any miracle stories of kids? DL: Yeah. One second-floor leaper we couldn't find a scratch on him. One third-floor little girl was unconscious but not hurt. We had a kid, two months old, coming down I-95 from Attleboro. Mom had taken the kid out of his seat to feed him, and they crashed. And the kid went out the back window with nothing on but a diaper and a T-shirt, and he bounced down the highway like a basketball. Now it's a baby, the plates in its skull haven't even formed yet. As we approached I thought, man, this kid's gonna die. He had a mouthful of glass, and we cleaned all that out, and he started screaming and I thought, he might just make it. TT: Let's talk about the Fourth of July in Pawtucket. Crazy stories. DL: That goes all the way back to the 1920s and 30s. TT: So starting in the 20s and 30s. DL: At least. Bonfires around the Fourth of July was a big tradition. TT: People would be out lighting up the neighborhoods. And these people would be burning sofas, mattresses, whatever the hell they could. DL: Piles of scrap wood. TT: When did that come to an end. 80s? DL: No, later than that. Into this century. When did you come on? TT: I got eight years. DL: It was pretty much dying out by the time you came on. And even now once and a while, we'll get something. But back in those days there was one on every corner. Especially Woodlawn. The guys would just go from one fire to the next. TT: Like 200 fires in 2 days... DL: Oh yeah, more than that even. Magill and Whitman was the epicenter of this activity. The kids would pile stuff up and it would be almost to the top of the utility poles, tires and scrap, soaking in gasoline, and I mean, the siding would start to smolder on the houses. TT: Isn't it crazy that this went on for 80 years and no one said, "This is probably something we shouldn't be doing?" DL: My father said they used to take rolls of old wallpaper, cut into three inch sections, soak it in kerosene, take one end and throw the roll up over the utility wires and light it, so now you'd have these flaming strips hanging down, and of course it would light the wires, sometime short out the juice. And fireworks with it. Tons of fireworks. TT: Anything goes, right? DL: Speaking of irony. I owned a three-family near the hospital. So I had the second-floor vacant, and I'm in there working, painting, and a guy knocks on the door, comes in, and he's got this pregnant woman with him, so he says, "You gonna be renting this place?" I says, "Yeah. You working?" He goes "No, but I'm on a case." He was suing somebody. So he looks like a wiseguy, got a bunch of tattoos, had the pregnant girl, he goes "Don't worry, we don't party too much." And he's laughing. And I'm saying to myself, "Yeah, you got a shot, pal." But to make it look good I took his name and number and says, "I'll call you when it's ready." So I go to work on the night shift a couple of days later, and we get sent to a shooting right down the street from the station. It's him. He got shot right in the jaw, on the right side, and the bullet came out his neck on the other side. We didn't know it but the bullet had transected his spinal cord. He was dead from the neck down, he wasn't breathing, so we got the breathing under control. Got him to the hospital alive, but he died a few days later, paralyzed from the neck down. TT: Jesus. Good thing you didn't rent to him. You never would've seen your money. DL: Right? I remember one Valentine's Day, this couple, they're both drunk, and he slaps her, so she breaks beer bottles over his head. They're both sitting there bleeding and the cops are there and I'm thinking, "Ain't love grand." (laughs) TT: A love story on Valentine's Day. Of course she's not gonna press charges and blah blah blah. You'd see the same repeat stuff, right? The guys who abuse women, they just do it over and over. DL: Yes. TT: So machetes, knives, what about a baseball bat? Me and Mikey had a guy that got hit in the head with a baseball bat one night. That was pretty fucked up. DL: Blunt force trauma? TT: Yeah, this guy had just gotten out of the hospital for a brain--these guys beat him and they took the skull off-- DL: To relieve the swelling? TT: Yeah. They put it back on, this poor bastard's in the hospital for weeks, and then they let him out and two nights later, he gets jumped over by the mart on Spring Street DL: Jesus.. TT: And they beat his head again. DL: Ugh. TT: I couldn't even believe it, I'm like this is.... he told us the story and I'm like oh my God.. so baseball bats. Now, in that bag you've got stuff written down? DL: Yes. (rummages through a plastic shopping bag and pulls out papers, receipts, backs of envelopes, each filled with notes on runs through the years. Rustling sounds of plastic and paper.) Yeah, I got a whole bunch-it's not very organized, and some of it is just a three word scribble to remind me of the story, so you wouldn't even be able to decipher it. Oh and I got a story here. I'm brand new on the job, it's 90 degrees out, humid, we get a three-decker going, one of those two-and-a-half stories where the only windows are the ones on the end? On the third-floor? It's got those slanted ceilings, so all the heat and fire was trapped, and I'm up there on the third-floor and almost throwing up in my mask. I'm trying to hang on because I'm a new guy and I'm gonna stay here, my ears are burning-- TT: It's hot as fuck. DL: Yeah. That was my first real good fire, my introduction to a hot, smoky, nasty, job. They finally opened the roof and it was like somebody put the air conditioning on, but up until that point we were dying up there. You could see the red glow of the fire rolling back and forth over our heads. TT- Sounds pretty jakey-- DL- Another run, we had a guy who was in a drunken blackout, killed her, beat her to death, and didn't realize he'd done it until he sobered up a little bit and looked at her. She was unconscious, so he called us and is on the phone saying, "Oh my god, I think I just killed so and so. And I don't remember doing it, I was drunk." The cops weren't even there. TT: Imagine being so hammer drunk you don't remember killing somebody? DL: There was--I didn't have it--but one of the crews had another one, guy came home drunk, beat his wife to death, and during the night, she was in the chair, and the toddler, a daughter, crawled into the dead mother's arms. And that's how the guys found her the next day. At first they weren't even sure the baby was alive, because the mother was obviously dead. And there was one off Weeden Street. The ex-boyfriend beat, strangled and stabbed this girl with a three-year-old daughter in the house, so the three-year-old spent the whole day with the dead mother. TT: Gross. DL: I was with a new guy, too. He was horrified. But the poor kid, all day long just hanging out with her dead mom. TT: Jesus. DL: I also remember a North Providence firefighter hung himself in our district, in his hallway closet. TT: I remember that. I was working on the other side of the city (Rescue 2). It was you and Curry, right? DL: Yes. TT: And Curry knew the guy, am I wrong about that? DL: Yes, he knew him and the girlfriend. We had another one, there was this girl who worked on an ambulance company, she hung herself on a curtain rod, also near our station. Yeah, so two hangings we worked together. TT: That Curry's a bad omen. DL: But yo know what? When he was first with me, we had a bunch of cardiac arrests in a short period of time, and we got pulses back on four of the five. So I started calling him, J.C. TT: Jesus Christ. I forgot about that. DL: Oh and Timmy Noiseaux, brand new with me, brand new on the job, he's all of twenty-one himself. he's transferred to the rescue and he still tells this story. We go to the highway, this guy crashed his car, ejected, his brains are all over the highway. Well Timmy's only twenty-one himself, he's never seen anything like this, probably never seen a dead guy, much less in that condition, so we go back to the station, we go inside, I'm warming up some spaghetti, and I look over at him--he's got the TV on but has a blank stare on his face, and he's smoking a cigarette and he's shaking. I go, "You all right?" It didn't even occur to me that he had never seen this. He turns around and says, "How can you eat!" (Laughs) TT: How can you have spaghetti... (laughs). The guy's brains are all over the road. You're like, "Kid, we got to eat lunch, the shift's not over." DL: It was late at night. A midnight snack. TT: What was the closest you ever came to hearing the bagpipes? DL: The old Narragansett Race Track. It was vacant. It was closed. There was a clubhouse, which was a huge structure that had stands in the front to watch the race. Behind that was a lounge and all type of concession stands. We're on the top floor, and the fire's going like hell. It's underneath the roof, rolling over our heads, and it's black in there, hot as hell, so all of a sudden the ceiling collapses and all of the plaster comes down on our heads and now it's just fire everywhere, rolling back and forth over us. Whoever was in charge said we didn't have enough water for this, I mean it was hot as hell and our ears were burning. He says, "We gotta get out of here." So we all bailed out. Not fifteen seconds later the whole roof came crashing down right where we had been. All that heavy timber caved right in. It was an old old building. Built in the 1920s TT: You ain't pushing that out of the way. DL: I've seen people with maggots living in their flesh. TT: Drug addicts? DL: Yeah, street people, homeless, drunks, and this lady, I knew her too. she was one of our regulars. She was a pleasant person, just obviously a drunk, and she fell and cut her head and was too busy drinking to worry about it. It was summer time, so some flies went in there and hatched. She had hundreds of maggots between her skull and her scalp, the docs poured acetone in the wound. The maggots came streaming out by the hundreds. TT: Now the drunks themselves are pretty remarkable as far as endurance. I mean guys who can drink and drink everyday, all day, their longevity is amazing. DL: I dealt with some of them for twenty years. Same person. Speaking of being irresponsible and not taking care of themselves. We had a guy, he fell on the ice on like a Monday. He was another drunk. Friday comes and his friends can't stand the smell of him anymore so they call us. Well, when he fell on Monday, he had an open fracture of his humerus. it was sticking straight out of his arm, and it had gotten gangrenous, and by the time we got there his arm was black from the shoulder all the way down. the bone was still sticking out and he was in horrible pain. It was gangrenous, which is one of the worst smells on earth. And I'm not sure, but I think he lost his arm. TT: What about decapitations? DL: Yes. Seen a few. The brick wall at the Stop and Shop was one, and another was a guy who got hit by a train so hard his eyeballs popped out of his head. The face was looking up at me and it looked like a Halloween mask. TT: Majority of train strikes are suicide, right? DL: Yes. After one of them, an engineer told the cops the guy was standing in the middle of the tracks. He turned back right before he was hit by an Acela doing 180 mph and locked eyes with the engineer. (searches his notes). One time we had a girl feeling suicidal. Took her to the hospital. Next night, same time, we go back to the same address. And this time she's in the shower dead. She had turned the heat up on the hot water tank, and I don't know how she stood it, but she stood under the scalding water and burned herself to death. All of the skin on her back and shoulders was peeling off. I mean how can you stand that? TT: That's dedication. That's the difference between people wanting help and wanting to die DL: We had, one of the babies I delivered, mom's in the room with three guys. The baby came out inside the placenta, which I had never seen before, so at first I looked and said, "What is this?" Then it dawned on me--the baby's still in the sack. So I got the scalpel, cut the kid out of the sack and the cord was wrapped around his neck three times. He was as blue as your jeans. So we got him breathing, got him nice and pinked up, wrapped him in a blanket, and I says, "Who's the lucky guy? You got a healthy baby boy." And they're all going, "Not me, not me." Well, it turns out she was a prostitute and was servicing these guys when she went into labor. Another time, a mom was in labor. We got her in the truck, dismissed the engine company, and we're going down York Avenue as she's screaming, "This baby's coming!" I barely had time to put the gloves on. She spits the kid out, right out onto the gurney. I missed him, didn't even get to catch him! So I says, "Rescue 1 to fire alarm, correct time please." To get the time of birth exact. I delivered nine babies. TT: Wow. DL: One time, we had a fire in a second-floor tenement. There was a steel door, and we had a helluva time getting in. So, Greg Brulé, big as a house, kicks the door with his size 16 boots, and the whole door crashed down with half the wall. But before that, a cop who was on patrol got to the fire first. He ran up to the third-floor to get everybody out. Meanwhile the smoke followed him up the stairs and he started to panic. He's hanging out the window, black smoke pouring out over him as he's yelling, "You gotta get me down!" We threw a ladder up right as the fire rolled out. TT: Brulé was a monster. I had a fire with him on West Ave and watched him kick in three different exterior doors. DL: He told me, "I've only been in one fight my whole life. I put the guy through a door, and then I'm going, I'm sorry, you all right?" (Laughs) (More notes) I took Chief Coutu, in Central Falls, he was still a lieutenant back then. They had four-decker blowing good. A big woman was hanging out the second-floor window. He threw a ground ladder and was trying to pull her though the window. But the room flashed over and back-drafted at the same time. It blew her out the window and down he goes with her on top. I think she died, but he broke his jaw, knocked out teeth, broke his wrist. He had multiple traumas, survived, came back to the job and went on to make chief. Second Part of interview January 17, 2017-- TT: I was talking with Bob Thurber- DL: He tell you about the kid they had? The guy's naked--a big black guy--the kid's naked. He hands him (Thurber) an eight-year-old kid that was just about dead. Anyway, the kid died. Turned out, the guy had been raping and beating this kid. It had been going on for a while. TT: The mother was in jail, right? DL: I don't know exactly what the back story was, but he got convicted of murder and everything he should have. TT: So we went through a bunch of stuff last time, and I know you might've had some other things to add. DL: Well, I mentioned to you--you asked me if I had to work on people I knew--and of course there was Chief Renzi, I knew the guy for thirty years and there I was doing CPR and running a code on the guy. Then there was Dave Tomlinson's sister. (Tomlinson, another legendary 28 year rescue guy, was in dispatch). It was a night shift. She had like seven months on the Police Department, her first night alone in a patrol car. I don't know what the guy did, but she starts chasing a guy on Power Road. There was a construction area, she hit a patch of sand, lost control of the vehicle, no seat belt, hit a pole, and when we got there she was unconscious. And not breathing very well. She didn't have a scratch--a mark on her, but you could tell she was in tough shape. What happened was she hit the base of her skull in the back-- TT: Oh no. The whiplash of the pole-- DL: Yeah. She bounced around the inside of the car--I don't know what she hit. TT: Did she have a pulse when you got there? DL: Yes, she had a pulse. She was barely breathing and then she started to seize and I knew she had a head injury. I was a brand new cardiac and so was my partner. We got six cops in the back of the rescue looking over our shoulders while we're trying to work on her and it was--you talk about stress. So anyway, these were the days before the trauma center, so we took her to Memorial, they shipped her to Boston and they pulled the plug a few days later. She was brain dead. TT: How old was she? Was she in her 20's? DL: Yeah, early twenties, and she looked like a kid. She was a little peanut of a thing, and like I said, not a mark, not a bruise, no blood, but you knew she was in tough shape. TT: This was the mid-80's? DL: Yes. Exactly. It was probably '84. '85. I would say '84. TT: Dave was on the job here, right? DL: He had just gotten on this job. He sent me to the call. And he did not know it was his sister. TT: Oh Jesus. DL: He just sent us, you know, for a police car involved in an auto accident. Not knowing. TT: Wow. Brutal. DL: And his father, who at the time was the chief of police, and his other brother was already a police officer-- TT: On Pawtucket? DL: Yes. So that whole thing was all connected. TT: A circle of horror. DL: Yes. TT: Let's talk about what this did--I mean you were able to absorb all of these runs, all of these terrible things, and you didn't turn to booze, like you were able to process all of this stuff. What did it do to you as far as, like, your personal relationships? You never brought the job home, right? DL: I would go home and talk about a few things. You know, just run it by the wife, but that would kind of be the end of it. I didn't dwell on it, and, I think the best thing I did was talk to other people on the job about what we had experienced, because who knows better than somebody who's doing the same thing as you? So that was my way of coping. And I drank a little bit. Especially when I was younger, I drank a lot (laughs). But I'm not saying it was because I needed to to cope with this job. TT: You've been married how long? DL: Forty years. TT: So you were able to weather everything without having it turn bad at home. DL: Yeah. And, you know, speaking about working on people you know, I did CPR on my mother-in-law. TT: Oh God. DL: Off duty. On Thanksgiving Day. TT: Oh my God. DL: So we're having Thanksgiving at our house, so I went to pick up my mother-in-law early cause she was gonna have to give my wife a hand getting things ready. So I go to her house and pick her up and she goes, "I don't feel very good. I'm a little dizzy." I said, "Well, come on and if you don't feel good I'll bring you home, whatever you want to do." So I get her in the car, I look over, she kind of went slack-jawed, had a little seizure and then coded, right in front of me. So I jumped out, dragged her out of the car, put her on the ground, started CPR, right in the driveway, and I had my father-in-law call 911. Anyway, they got her pulse back but she died a day or two later. TT: Happy Thanksgiving. DL: Yeah. I ever tell you about the time with Joe Cordeiro? When the guy slashed his face? TT: No. DL: We went to 150 Dartmouth Street, which is an elderly high rise. Last place you'd expect trouble. And just the rescue, no engine. Woman ill. So we knock on the door, and the door opens about this much (holds hands inches apart) and an arm and a hand comes out with a knife in it-- TT: Get out of here. DL: Yup. And the knife catches Joe Cordiero just under his eye all the way down to his jaw, but not deep. He had pulled his face back and it was just like a deep scratch, like an abrasion, and he was bleeding. Looked bad at first but it turned out to be superficial. Turns out the guy was the lady's son who had just gotten out of the psych ward, and he was having some sort of episode. (Tones hit for a house fire. Interview suspended until January 18, 2017) TT: So where were we? DL: Well, they got the door open, the arm came out, it was like Alfred Hitchcock. Like Psycho, the shower scene? Remember? TT: Yeah (laughs) DL: So we muckled the guy and sat on him. At the time, there were dead spots? With the portable radios? And 150 Dartmouth Street was one of those spots. TT: Before they put the repeaters in, right? DL: Right. Exactly right. In fact, that was one of the incidents that kind of called attention to the need for the repeaters. (Repeaters are used to boost radio transmissions. They were installed in two high rises in Pawtucket soon after so the entire city would be covered). So the only people--we were yelling into our portables--Fire Alarm couldn't hear us, but Engine 1 did (Station 1 is barely a mile from Dartmouth Street). Because they were close by. So they barely heard us and they came running. And by the time they got there we were sitting on the guy. We had taken the knife off him. TT: Did he stab the lady inside? DL: Nope. It was his mom. So anyway, Joe didn't need stitches... TT: He just got whisked by the knife. DL: Yup. I mean...close call. TT: (Battalion Chief) Kraweic was talking about, um, cause he didn't do a lot of rescue time-- DL: Right. TT: It was interesting to get his perspective from the chief's level of like, on the fireground itself. Not just when we're showing up and we're doing our jobs, thinking about we have to do, he's thinking about thirty guys, you know, and their safety... DL: Yeah. He's got to keep thirty people safe. That's his whole deal. TT: That kind of responsibility must be brutal. DL: It is. That's a whole different--like you said, we don't think of that too much. TT: I mean everyone's scurrying around, and he's got to worry about 80,000 people (in the city) on top of that. DL: Was Al Jack gone when you came on? TT: Yes. DL: He was in charge of the fire where Hargreaves got killed. I mean he went on to become the chief in Tiverton and then Seekonk--he's got forty years in the fire service--but that fire rattled him to his core. He'll go to his grave with it. TT: The weight of command. DL: Yes. All kinds of second guessing, you know, what did I do wrong? And he did nothing wrong. The only guy that screwed up that day was John Hargreaves. I don't know if anyone talked to you about that. TT: Yeah, he went in alone-- DL: Yup. He was freelancing. TT: It's too bad. Al Jack had nothing to do with that decision. Freelancing's dangerous business. DL: Yup. I mean he's retired now, he's got a nice life, but that'll always be with him. And that's his nature anyway. He's one of those OCD kind of guys, worries about-- TT: He's a detail guy. DL: Yes. Worries about the little stuff. TT: And at that level, there are Battalion Chiefs that some guys--blah blah blah, everyone talks about somebody, but once you get to that level, there's not a lot of guys that are like, "I fear for my safety because that guy's chief." I mean these guys know what they're doing, on a basic level, on a tactical level. I mean you can't rise that high-- DL: Yes. Al Kraweic's another good example. He was a very conscientious firefighter, lieutenant, a captain, and Battalion Chief. That's his makeup. "If I'm gonna do this job I'm gonna do it right. I'm gonna try and make sure myself and the guys go home at night." TT: Leading by example, Kraweic, right? A man of few words, but the words he said-- DL: But I know he used to get worried and nervous and he used to lose it a little bit once and a while and get pissed off for someone screwing up--which he has a right do, and he should've done, because that's his job. Even though most of the time he was a mellow, easy going kind of person... TT: He was talking about (Battalion Chief Jay) McLaughlin as well as far as like tactics. We were talking about, on the actual fireground itself, how you're directing the scene. Some guys have a sense for these things. DL: Right. Jay's another one. Smart guy, great tactician, knows his job--he can be an asshole to deal with--but he'll make sure you go home at night. TT: Kraweic was talking about (Bobby) Ogle as far as like, just being a hands on fireman, really a talented guy when it came to that kind of stuff. DL: Bobby Ogle? Bobby was a gutsy guy. He was a Vietnam veteran and just balls to the wall. Fearless, really. But sensible at the same time. He wouldn't take unnecessary chances but he was good. TT: Kraweic was saying one time Ogle saw something and Kraweic--they were in a room. Kind of like the story you had about the racetrack, where somebody said, "We gotta get outta here right now." And they did, thank God, because Kraweic said the roof collapsed seconds later. Anyway, we already spoke about how you were able to compartmentalize everything you saw. Without it taking a toll... DL: Well, yeah, I think I took that from Vietnam. Because I saw some shit over there too. I just kind of put it away. Did I mention to you, like, after I retired I started thinking about Vietnam? TT: Really? DL: Because for all those years I worked two jobs (he ran a painting business as well), raised a family--I mean I was busy. All the time busy. So last winter right after I retired I wasn't doing any painting. I wasn't doing much of anything--my wife got a hip replacement so I was kind of nursing her. And Vietnam came back. All of a sudden it's in my head. TT: Wow. Forty years later, right? DL: Forty years later. So I availed myself of the services of the VA. Not because of that but because all I wanted was an ID card so I could get a ten percent discount at the big box stores? (Laughs) So I went in there and they were great. They said while you're here get a physical, talk to this councilor, see if you got anything else going on, you know, you're a Vietnam vet, blah blah blah. So I told this person, and he said, "You know, don't feel like the Lone Ranger. I'm seeing this alot." He said, "Guys your age, you're retiring, you've had busy lives, and you've kind of put Vietnam behind you, but all of a sudden you've got time on your hands, and all this stuff comes back." He said it's common, and it usually passes within a few months. And he was exactly right. TT: You were able to deal with it. You took the steam out of it. DL: You talk about what this job does to you or doesn't, uh, I say it didn't bother me but, yeah, especially when things didn't go right, trying to save somebody--especially a young person--and you lose them ... that's tough. And you take that home with you, that's a tough thing to deal with. And this job--it wasn't just what I did, it was who I was. I was this job. And still, what am I doing? (He motions around us). I'm hanging around a fire station. TT: Thirty-five years, right? DL: Thirty-six. TT: The same thing with (Name redacted). He lost his identity, and he kind of lost his way at the end. DL: You know I didn't have that kind of reaction but, I dreamt about--I'm still dreaming about the job. I'm going on runs in my sleep. Not as much now, but at first ... TT: Really. DL: Oh yeah, all the time. Every night there was something about the job in my head, you know, while I was sleeping. Getting up in the middle of the night thinking I've got to go on a run. I'm at home in my bed and I'm thinking, "How come it's so quiet? Why aren't I going out the door?" TT: You're also making up for thirty years of lost sleep, too DL: Yeah, that's the good part of it. So yes, it affects you. Some more than others, obviously. Same thing with going to war. Some people deal with it and others not so good. DL: And to, you know, you become inured to a lot of this stuff. Uh, somebody who doesn't do this for a living would find that just one incident horrifying, but like anything else you get used to it, you learn to adjust to it, whatever, because it's your job so, a lot stuff that other people would find terrible ... that was just another day at the office for me. TT: Yeah. DL: So maybe I'm screwed up that way. I don't know. I got through it TT: It's a lot to absorb (long pause) We were talking ... guys like Callahan, Slater, Joe Pike... These guys look ten years younger once they retired. They look so much better. That's how much it drained them. DL: Callahan. He's another guy that had a tough time with the Hargreaves fire. He was on the rescue that day with Artie Mintsmenn, and they took John to the hospital. And uh, when they realized how bad he was, that he probably wasn't gonna make it, Callahan had a tough time with that. You know, as they say, you can see a thousand terrible things, but that next one might put you over the edge. So, maybe everybody's got a breaking point. TT: As far as dealing (with all of this), these services kind of developed along the way. Like the Critical Stress Debriefings... DL: Yeah I went to two of them over the years. From time to time they'd get offered. The first one I went to was in 1989, after we watched those two guys burn to death on Dexter Street, that was the first time I had ever been involved in a PTSD debriefing. And they had a team together. One was a clergyman, one was a firefighter with training in debriefing people, and another guy was like a psychologist or something. So anyway, a bunch of us went to this thing because, you know, we were traumatized. And uh, I don't know if you know, but I lost my own kid to a SIDS death. TT: I did not know that. DL: He was a month old. Um, that's the worst thing that ever happened to me by far. First kid after eleven years without one--we weren't sure we were ever gonna have one, then a miracle happens, we have a kid and we lose him. So this fire was like maybe a year and a half after I'd lost...? So for some reason, sitting at this debriefing session with these professional people, I guess they knew how to push our buttons because I lost it. All it did was bring back losing my own kid and all the shitty stuff that had happened to me, so I says, I don't know if this is doing any good or making things worse. TT: The accrued toll of everything after awhile, was something that the VA, especially when you started dealing with the Vietnam stuff, did it provide a way to process the whole career? To just kind of put it all in perspective? DL: You know who did that for me? Mike McMahon, who was a dispatcher on this job for thirty-five years. A long time on my shift, I mean he sent me to hundreds of these incidents, thousands even. Um. And he's a Vietnam Vet that almost--he was so badly injured they flew his parents to Hawaii to say good bye to him because they were convinced he was gonna die. In fact he became a dispatcher because it was all he was able to--did you ever meet him? TT: I did not. He was retired by then. DL: His hands were still all...kind of like this (forms two claws) from the injuries? He still had shrapnel in his body that, every once in awhile a piece would work its way to the surface and he'd pull it out? Anyway, I told him about what happened to me after I retired, and how Vietnam came back, and he said to me, he said, "Think about this. You never had a normal life." He says, "You went to Vietnam when you were nineteen-years-old, then you came on this job, you were working sometimes three or four shifts in a row, sometimes three or four days nonstop. You worked another job, you worked days, you worked nights, you worked evenings, you didn't have a normal schedule or a normal anything like the average person." He says, (laughs uncontrollably) "You're lucky you're as good as you are." (Laughter) DL: He says the same thing happened to him after he retired from here. And the Vietnam stuff came back a little bit. But he said, "Think about that. You had a pretty whacky career." TT: With no down time to process any of it. DL: He says, "Just be grateful you're as good as... you know, if you need to talk to me some more we'll talk. But you'll be okay." And he was exactly right. (Long pause) Thirty-six is a long road. But I enjoyed it right to the end. Like I told--I don't know if you saw the article when I retired that the Times did? TT: Yup. DL: I told the guy, "I never got tired of it." And it was the truth, even though it was kicking my ass, physically and mentally I was exhausted. Think I told you, when I finally called it a day I said, "Geez, I didn't know how much I needed to retire until I retired." (Laughs) This is all right. (Laughs) They send me money every month, got healthcare, I'm good. TT: McMahon was right. You strung together forty years of hell right there. It has to find its place. DL: Something just crossed my mind and then it went away again. That happens a lot when you get older. TT: Kraweic was like, "I wish there were a couple of other guys in here because if there was a bunch of us we can all start talking and stuff comes back." DL: We would remind each other of stuff. Yes. TT: But it's funny because as each of you tells these stories, because you're all--most of you--some of you were on the same shift and we were at the same events, its told from different angles--the same story--and that's how you know it's all true. It's all backed up by everybody else. And if you weren't there, you didn't see it, you don't know. DL: Speaking of old timers who knew their business, John Buchanon was another one. He was working the day Hargreaves got killed. That was actually my shift but I was on vacation. I was up in New Hampshire with the kids. In fact, this is so weird, I got a PFD T-shirt on, I'm in like Storyland in New Hamphire, and this guy comes up to me and says, "How's that Pawtucket guy doing?" And I says, "What're you talking about?" He was an East Providence firefighter and he'd heard about the Hargreaves fire, and I hadn't heard about it. So, when I heard that, I said, "Jesus, we gotta go home." We were gonna stay another day, so for some reason I just felt like I had to be back here. What I was gonna do? No idea. But I came home. Anyway, this John Buchanon. He was a savvy firefighter. And he came out to change his bottle. And uh, Al Jack, in charge of the fire, says to him, "What's it like in there?" And I'll never forget this. John said--Al Jack told me this--John didn't say it's hot, it's this or it's that, he said, "The fucking devil's down there and it's gonna kill somebody." TT: (Gasp. Shocked laughter) DL: He says, "I have never," and he had twenty something years, and in those days a lot of fires, even like--he was on before me, and there were a lot of fires before I came on. Anyway, he says, "I have never seen conditions like this." He said, "The fire is everywhere and it's nowhere," he says, "It's fucking hot as hell," and he says, "You can actually feel the pressure in there. The place...it just wants to explode." This place had triple plexi-glass windows, it had three roofs on it, it had been remodeled a number of times, and instead of tearing stuff out, they just added more stuff on. Guys were hitting the windows with axes, the point of an axe, and it would just, like a cartoon, axe would bounce off and you'd make a little hole this big (holds fingers barely quarter inch apart) because it wasn't only plexiglass but it was super--like it could stop a bullet. TT: Thurber was saying they had to take the actual wall apart under the windows. They couldn't even go through the windows at all, they were taking bricks out... DL: Yeah, uh, Spud Taylor, another great firefighter. Ladder 2, but a great ladder man, and we don't have that many real good ladder guys, goes up on the roof, he opens the roof, and there was none better at--especially being fast in opening a roof--now smoke comes out but not a lot, and he pokes, there's another roof. So he opens that one up and more smoke but not a ton like you'd expect, pokes, another roof. There was three fucking roofs on the building. So they had a helluva time venting it. and the place had a fire load. It had plastic, it had wooden furniture, it had decorations, just, it was made to burn. And no vent. Nothing was coming out. TT: It was just sucking the life out of everything around it. DL: The fire started in the basement, so the guys were down there, trying to find the seat of the fire and uh, but the fire would flash over their heads, almost like that movie Backdraft, and that's when John Buchanon told Al Jack, "I've never seen anything like it." TT: Now, did at some point Jack pull everybody out and just say "Fuck it." DL: Yeah, I think that was just before or just after someone realized Hargreaves was missing. TT: Oh wow. TT: Are there any--I don't want to say regrets because you don't have any--but when you look back on the whole career, is there anything you would've done differently? DL: Well, a lot of guys chide me for staying on the rescue. They said, "You could've been a Battalion Chief, blah blah blah." I don't really regret it. I think I found a niche where I was and I liked the action. You kind of get hooked on that activity, that busyness. TT: The juice. DL: Yeah. So I think I stayed where I belonged. TT: The rescue reminds me of--you know the trains going down the track, and on the top is the antennae that connects to 200,000 volts up there? DL: (Laughs) Yup. TT: Right? That's what the rescue reminds me of. In the car itself, people are cruising along, guys are on their trucks, and up above is where the real electricity's going on. Like where the mainline--the rescue's out there prowling around all the time, it's the one main piece of the whole job that is the whole job. DL: You know, I got to meet street people, lawyers and everything in between. You meet a cross section of society you would otherwise never encounter. The down and out, the druggies and drunks, and homeless people, poor people...you know, poor people are invisible unless you have a job like ours, unless you're a social worker or something, you know I'd go into these tenements and people had no furniture, no food, little kids running around all ragged looking, sad situations, you know? I used to tell my kids all the time, "You have no idea how lucky you are." And my youngest, (laughs) she's kind of a smart ass, and she used to go, "Don't tell me, more tales from the street, dad." (long laugh). TT: That's perspective right there. DL: I'd deal with some of these people for years. The same homeless drunks and druggies and...what was her name...Anyway there was this one girl, poor thing got into a bad lifestyle at an early age like seventeen, eighteen, she started with the drugs and drinking and she, she was an addict. And she was used and abused out there, anyway, I used to say to whoever I was working with, "She's committing suicide on the installment plan." And uh, sure enough, at about the age of thirty-five, thirty-six, she died from an overdose. But she had a rough go of it the whole way. TT: You saw the whole sixteen-year decline. DL: I saw her downslide for all that time. Same thing with Jay Minasian. I started picking him up when he was eighteen. He was forty-four when he died and I was still picking him up. Twenty-six years. I knew his birthday by heart--I didn't even have to ask him his birthday. TT: Twenty-six years is pretty incredible. That's a lifestyle most people wouldn't survive for a weekend. DL: I saw a whole bunch of those people die. TT: It's amazing the amount of abuse the body can take. Especially sleeping outside, drinking all day to whenever you pass out, then just wake up and do it all over again. DL: You're chronically malnourished and dehydrated. Yeah, you're right. The body is a powerful thing. You don't die easy. TT: One of the worst things--medically--in my brief time on the rescue, me and Mikey had two people that were going out with end stage liver failure. Cirrhosis. Hep C. DL: Yep. Yep. They had the big swollen belly but the rest of them was skin and bones? TT: Skin and bones and yellow. This one guy was just screaming in his bedroom, "Leave me here to die!" His family was trying to get him to go to the hospital. He was like, "They're not gonna do anything, I'm gonna die!" Hep C, HIV...we had two of those guys in like a month and I was like, "This is one way I don't want to die." Any other way there is, but that didn't look very pleasant. DL: Nope. And they have that smell, cause their liver's not processing the toxins, so they're just circulating in the body, and you just have this terrible odor. At this point this interview wraps up. I tell him it was an honor to be a part of it. He offers me three giant garbage bags filled with newspaper clippings and photographs accumulated over thirty-six years. A truly staggering collection. He tells me to call with any questions and then says, "You know, I just read something that I thought was funny, and it's very true ... Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense." Interview ends
1 Comment
Meghan L
10/22/2020 04:42:19 am
I am Richard Lemay's daughter- thank you so much for conducting this interview! It was amazing to read and I am glad we have this document! I really appreciate it. Fascinating and horrifying stories.
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AuthorTom Trabulsi was born in the Midwest, attended high school in Rhode Island, and graduated from Boston University with a degree in American History. He was a bike courier in Boston and New York City, worked construction in the mountain west and east coast, and is currently a firefighter in a northeast city. Archives
August 2022
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