Wildland Firefighter's Wives: Gone but not Forgotten

On a hill visible in Prescott, was a P 19.......in honor of the fallen

This week I was invited to the memorial of the Granite Mountain Hotshot Crew, to read The Hotshot Prayer. Below is the message I read which gave a little history and meaning behind the prayer.

In 2002, my husband & I bought our first home. While he was decorating his nook, I noticed that a lot of his firefighter nick knacks pertain to structure firefighting and this bugged me. One day as he came home with a cast iron Maltese cross with the Fireman’s prayer on it. He was proud of it as he hung it on the wall. I looked at it and said “It’s nice but it has nothing to do with what you do.” He said to me “Well that’s all that’s out there.” I was determined to find something so I searched and searched, and found nothing. I was frustrated and annoyed that the Wildland Firefighters, more specifically the Hotshots had no recognition outside of the wildland world. I shared my frustrations with him. He looked at me and said “Well do something about it.” So I sat down with pen and paper and the original Fireman’s Prayer as a model. After a week and a little help with Hotshot lingo from hubby, The Hotshot Prayer was written. My husband was a Captain at the time and was also the one who put together the end of the season presentation. Every year the presentation would be photos, and videos of the assignments that year, silly Hotshot antics and dares, bets lost. At the end he would always put a section dedicated to those who gave the ultimate sacrifice while battling wildland fires regardless of what agency or department they worked for. This was the first time the Hotshot Prayer was presented. His crew liked it but after that it sat. In 2007, I started a blog called “Wildland Firefighter Wives”. I wanted something that Wildland wives both new & old could go to share stories and ask questions about life with a Wildland Firefighter. We talk about things like: What’s it like to have them gone? Is it normal to sleep with his shirt? Why does everything break or go wrong when they are gone? Dealing with the kids while they are away and the list goes on. I found the Prayer that I had written and posted it.

On June 30, 2013, he had just got home from a local fire and received a phone call about the fatalities. While we did not know any of the Granite Mountain Hotshots personally, it hit very close to home since he was the now the Superintendent of a USFS Interagency Hotshot Crew. As we hugged each other tightly that night with tears in our eyes, I remember thinking about those families who no longer had their loved ones to hold. The next few days as more information surfaced, I just couldn’t get my mind off those families. My husband attended the memorial and called to tell me that Brendan (the survivor) was going to read The Hotshot Prayer, I had written so many years before and had forgotten about. How could a prayer that I wrote, become words of comfort during such a horrible tragedy. I’m just a simple woman, who wrote a words from my heart. I believe God placed those words on my heart to write the prayer, knowing that someone would need them.