One Common Goal...

On Friday, our department was contacted by Charles "Chas" & Elizabeth Cox. A Marine Corps host family for a pair of French students, Julien Blanc and Kevin DiMeo who have been traveling abroad. The reason for the call was that the one student, Julien, is going through the Fire Academy in Aubenas, France where he is from and will be graduating in July. Now the Cox family realizing this thought what a great idea to bring him up to a fire station in the U.S. so he could experience the American firefighter tradition. So on Monday April 14, 2008, Julien was brought to our station to ride along with Crew 1 of our department. He met with Sgt. Andrew Davis and myself, and was introduced to the rest of the duty crew. Then Julien and his host Mom, Elizabeth were given a tour of the station and grounds. The crew gave Julien a walk around with our apparatus and the pumper he was riding on. Though there was a slight language barrier, and even though we were from two very different parts of the world, our love and passion for firefighting and common goal was the bond that was used to communicate. I think we enjoyed his visit just as much as he did and learned a lot about each other's fire departments.