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Posted by Francis on 10/19/2009, 9:36 pm
216.10.53.154
In the latest edition of the Copper River Record, published by Mary and Jim Odden, Mary wrote the following column about Pete Brown and his indirect connection to McGrath.
[whos driving – feature]
Getting a Grip
We have a warm personal connection to one of the stories in the Anchorge Daily News published on October 10, “No Funeral Blues for Aniak Fire Chief Pete Brown.”
We don’t know Fire Chief Pete Brown of Aniak personally, but in years past we’ve had many phone conversations with him, and we are very sorry to find out he has cancer and probably not much longer to live.
Brown, like Ed Knoebel, weighed the odds he was recently given and decided to decline treatment, opting instead to come home and have a farewell party last weekend while he was still around to enjoy it.
ADN estimated that as many as 500 people from around the state were planning to celebrate with Brown, who is famously the founder of the Dragon Slayers, a village fire and rescue organization run mostly by teenage girls.
You already know the story, or you can read it in one of the many articles written about the Dragon Slayers since Oprah discovered them in 2003.
A synopsis: Brown is a Vietnam vet who has lived in Aniak since 1973. When his son was injured in the early 1990s and Brown noticed emergency medical services were scarce, he organized an EMS and recruited teens to help. He knew they were ready. The service started out with mostly teenage boys, but over the years they dropped out and the girls took over.
Good intentions are everywhere, but Brown knew where the rubber hit the road – his “kids” got intensive fire and medical rescue training and many hours of practice every week. They got good grades and they didn’t miss the training and practice sessions or else they were out of the squad.
The squad grew its own respect in the community and with schoolmates, and the Dragon Slayers are proud of their work. They help a lot of people, travel miles on mid-winter Alaska trails responding to calls. And many of those who have graduated to adulthood through their ranks have joined the military or medical or other helping professions.
In 2003, the members of the Aniak Dragon Slayers were on Alaska State Trooper-sponsored demonstration visits around western Alaska. The confident girls with their skills and turnout gear impressed our McGrath kids at a school assembly.
Then, after the accidental drowning of young Patrick Norback, a friend to all of them, and a close look at the importance of emergency medical volunteers, about a dozen boys and girls signed up to join the Kuskokwim Rescue Squad.
Teens are famously ready to battle injustice, but it usually takes the form of arguing over whose turn it is to do the dishes.
Up against a real need, evident in the dwindling village adult EMS squadmembers, and in the face of the terrible injustice of Patrick’s life cut short, our kids rose to the call and took on medical first responder training.
There was a 16-year old driving the Ambulance (until the folks in charge of buying insurance for the ambulance reluctantly had to notice), and teens responded to strokes and broken bones and burns and runaway skillsaws. They stabilized seriously injured people and put them on Life flights to Anchorage.
It is an interesting side-effect of our short tenure with the KVRS, about 20 people at its height in 2004, that the adults on the squad began to treat the youngsters who had not graduated from high school as peers.
In turn, we were rewarded with a high degree of responsibility taken on by the younger members, and some lasting friendships based on mutual respect.
The energy of the teen squad didn’t last, probably because some of us left town and none of us was Pete Brown. But the legacy of our squad and the many youngsters involved in medical rescue around the state should inform school officials and social workers moaning over the ills of Alaska’s rural villages:
Arm the kids with trust and responsibility, let them work alongside caring adults ready to teach them, learn with them, and accept them as equals – and let the work be real.
It’s the doorway to a productive adulthood. And it doesn’t hurt us older ones to pass through it too.
Thanks, Pete.
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