Saluting Our Heroes

A luncheon at the Marco Island Yacht Club on January 8 offered the chance to hear about the people and organizations whose goal – whose reason for being – is protecting the rest of us.

The Salute Our Heroes Luncheon, sponsored by the Rotary Club of Marco Island Noontime, explained to the 88 people in the sellout audience the workings of the fire department and took them through a long-ago firefight during the dawn of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

The affair began with a welcome from Rotarian Detlef Rethage, who took the lead in organizing the event, with major assistance from club past president and Flags for Heroes co-chair Linda Sandlin. Rethage recounted how he watched a bystander heroically pull a driver from a burning car just before it exploded, which got him thinking about the people who do such work on a regular basis.

“Heroes are ordinary people who do extraordinary things for us,” he told the group.

After an invocation by pastor Scott Kerens of Marco Presbyterian Church, the singing of the National Anthem by soprano Stephanie Lorenz, and recognition of elected representatives and government officials in the hall, Fire-Rescue Chief Chris Byrne led the group through an exposition of the work of his department.

“The Fire Rescue Department responds to 4,000 emergencies per year that include fires, medical emergencies, marine emergencies, rescue incidents, hazardous materials, and dive rescue emergencies,” said Byrne, after first acknowledging the irony of a fire chief named “Byrne.”

“Our firefighters are also paramedics. As I use the term firefighters, keep in mind they are firefighter/paramedics, and carry on their trucks the same equipment you will find on an ambulance, with the exception of stretchers. In fact, the vast majority of calls to the department these days do not involve fires, but rather medical situations.

“We are here to solve your problems, often on your worst day,” he said. “We accomplish this with 36 firefighters and four chief officers. Daily we staff two fire engines, one ladder truck, led by a battalion chief.”

Byrne added that the fire department and other first responders “protect the community, but we do so under the umbrella of our military and our veterans.”

An example of just what that can entail came from the event’s keynote speaker, former U.S. Army Lt. Jim Lane, who was part of one of the first units to be deployed to Vietnam at the beginning of this country’s massive escalation of the Vietnam War.

Lane took the audience through a synopsis of a firefight against heavy odds in November 1965, when he was a young second lieutenant, plucked from the enlisted ranks and newly graduated from Ranger and airborne training.

They were sent on a “search and destroy” mission, he said, but the North Vietnamese troops found them and did a lot of the destroying.

“They sent us to find the enemy, but they found us, and kicked our butts,” he said. Lane, who was awarded the Silver Star, the Purple Heart, and additional decorations from the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments, was critically wounded, but amazingly came through the three-day engagement without losing a man under his command.

He repeatedly brandished the hunting knife, not Army issue, that he said “became my very best friend” when the NVA soldiers crept into their position at night and fighting became hand-to-hand. The U.S. troops survived by calling in airstrikes on their own positions, in a situation of utter confusion, with the GIs not even on the same radio frequency as their fellows.

The luncheon also included the “military medley,” with veterans asked to stand when their service anthem was sung, and a presentation on the work of Warrior Homes of Collier, dedicated to providing housing for homeless veterans.

To close the event, auctioneer and local attorney Chris Lombardo conducted a “cash call,” raising something like $19,000, said Sandlin, which will be shared between Warrior Homes and the Marco Island Fire Rescue Foundation.

Attendees were also pitched on the upcoming Flags for Heroes event, which plants approximately 400 flags on Marco, each sponsored in the name of a loved one or designated hero.