A while back I watched an episode of my favorite Facebook show. Well no offense but it is the only one I know of but I love the host, Mike Rowe and the show is called Returning the Favor. Each week on que on Tuesday morning I wake to a new segment and each one learning about as Mike puts it a bloody do gooder who makes the world a little bit better place for the rest of us. This weeks episode was about a widow and a mother who started an organization Wildland Firefighter Guardian Institute to protect the safety of wild land firefighters so someone else doesn't have to face the pain of loosing loved ones that they have, by buying safety equipment and essentials that otherwise the firefighters have to provide for themselves.
The segment goes and Mike and his crew have gotten donations of chain saws and other tools to assist in fighting wild fires had a statue built for the State Park where this group lost their lives battling a wild fire and during the interview the mother who lost her son is from the Granite Mountain Hotshot crew at the Yarnell Hill fire was sharing a story that her son had made bracelets that simply said. Be Better. A reminder to be a better person, better husband, better father. He made them for members of his family and of course his mother still wearing hers in tears asks Mike if she can give it to him. He gratefully accepts. Well you can watch the episode yourself along with all the others.
As they were sharing their story it made me think about the movie about the Granite Mountain Hotshots Only the Brave. This is one of those movies that everyone in the movie is a hero. Knowing you are going into the fire to help save others homes but after they finally get their certification and they are the leads on a fire in their own back yard that they aren't saving someone elses neighborhood they are saving their own. These 19 men work and train as a team are more like family and as we were watching the movie I thought I can't remember how this ends in real life. I don't know if they are going to make it out of this fire alive. Which reminded me of another movie The Perfect Storm based on the true story of the Andrea Gail and her crew. I liked the movie and my sister who saw it soon after I did was mad and said she didn't like it because the people died and I said, they died in real life. What did you think was going to happen? So as I was watching Only the Brave, I thought this must be how my sister felt not knowing. In The Perfect Storm for me it was like the Titanic you already know the boat is going to sink going into the theater but somehow my sister wasn't aware that the Andrea Gail and her crew were going down in the storm. Here I am now 18 years later thinking I know how she felt. I looked at Brian and said, I am afraid they aren't going to make it out of this fire. Which made me really sad. These guys worked so hard to get where they were and how could they loose it all and I thought to myself would there be a movie about the group that lives? Since I have mentioned so many great movies and another just came to mind about fighting wild fires, Always with Holly Hunter, John Goodman and Richard Dreyfus, made in 1989 this is the best love story and John Goodman is the best funny man but again will love win over the fire? You will have to watch but great movie.
Back to Only the Brave and as the movie closes I am saddened by the scene of family members gathering not knowing if their loved one lived or died. I am not going to give the whole thing away but I now know how my sister felt after watching The Perfect Storm. And as they always do during Returning the Favor they have the big reveal at the end and they had bracelets made up that say Be Better on them and I thought it ties the whole thing together. These men were just trying to be the best firefighters they could with what they had to work with and to take it a step further the men were trying to be the best people they could knowing that they had a calling in life that risks their lives and they don't really understand how that affects the people around them when they are gone. And the wife and mother that are trying to be better at being wives and mothers which means letting their sons and husbands go each time knowing how they will worry and yet have to go on doing what they do.
Even now after the fact it brings a tear to my eye. I just want to be the best me I can be. Sometimes my head gets in the way of my ambitions. Either way great show, great movies and a great message. Just be better.
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