I want to welcome you real quick to my blog Firehouse Heavyweights. I created this blog because I figured I should start writing about my life and adventures, since I don’t keep a journal or anything like that.
I currently live in Wisconsin, and have lived here since 2014. I have a wife and we have 5 kids, as well as two cats, and a dog… and birds…
I love to do outdoor stuff, play video games, and talk trash to people on video games while on Xbox Live.
I grew up in Worcester, MA. Never did I think, that a fire I observed back in December of 1999, would be one of those fires to change the fire service world wide forever.
It was the Worcester Cold Storage fire that took the lives of 6 firefighters. I remember most of it since one of the fallen firefighter’s daughter was in my 2nd grade class ( I was 9ish at the time). I remember that afternoon all the smoke just billowing out of the abandoned cold storage, as my mom brought my younger brother and I to our friend’s house to go play some video games.
When she came back to pick us up, we saw the fire from literally across the city, since Worcester at the time was mostly flat. The cold storage was right next to the highway, so there was no missing it if you were leaving or entering Worcester.
This caused me to avoid looking to get into the fire service or public safety for that matter. Fast forward to high school, I originally wanted to get into something like nursing for a while, because I figured I could make some really good money doing it. Then came my senior year, and my GPA sucked, I bombed the SAT & ACT…
So my mom sat me down and straight up told me, that I should consider the military, because she would not be able to pay for me to go to college. A few weeks later, recruiters from the Marine Corps showed up, and gave us their spiel. I was convinced, and decided to enlist with the Army, and not Marines. I did that because I felt the Army had more options job wise, to choose from.
So I joined the Army as a Signals Intelligence Analyst (35N), and that was a pretty awesome job. I was pretty fortunate to have spent my entire enlistment out in Germany, That was pretty cool. My first born son was born out there, and I tried to teach him some German, but failed miserably at that lol. I decided to finish up my enlistment and get out.
So I came to Wisconsin after Germany, and decided to try out being a Software Developer. Went to school for it, it was rough, because it is a whole different mindset. Got hired as a developer by a local company, and I got pretty bored with it very fast. So much for that degree.
So one day, I see a friend of mine that was a police officer, and he simply told me I should go apply, and that I did. I got into the academy and got hired right out of the academy, it was a great feeling of accomplishment.
Down the road, I decided I no longer wanted to be in law enforcement, due to the growing police hatred, as well as the dangerous nature of the job, my family urged me to look at other options. Well, this is when I started doing bucket list types of different jobs, I was even a bounty hunter at one point!
A few years later while I was eating a Famous Dave’s, I decided i was going to give the fire service a try after all. By the grace of God, I landed an internship with a full time department and eventually got hired on.
So my goal with this blog is to show other big guys/gals like me, what I did to get in, the things i’ve learned, as well as mistakes to avoid, that I did not.
Make sure you follow us also on Facebook and Pinterest.
