Soles of appreciation
Donna Picone gets a quick ride on a North Reading firetruck after walking to the main station from her Danvers home last week.
(Photos by Lisa Poole for the Boston Globe)
By
Taryn Plumb
Globe Correspondent
/
May 17, 2012
As many people do on crisp, sunny mornings,
Donna Picone laced up her Sauconys, grabbed a bottle of water, and set
out for a walk with a close friend.
But
this was no ordinary get-the-blood-moving, enjoy-the-outdoors stroll:
The women were in for a nearly 9½-mile trek from their Danvers
neighborhood to the North Reading Fire Station.
They
weren’t training for a sporting event; they weren’t raising money for a
cause; and they didn’t have too much time on their hands.
Their
many footsteps served a different purpose: To raise awareness of the
dangerous job firefighters do, and to show their appreciation by
donating one of the most precious things a person can: time.
“Everybody
can raise money for a charity,” said Picone, 55, who has made it a
personal quest to visit as many fire stations north of Boston as
possible by foot or, if she has to, by car. “I give the support by
walking the miles.”
Over the
past six years, Picone has walked from her Danvers home to fire
stations in 15 area cities and towns, from her old hometown of Salem all
the way to North Andover.
Last
Friday, she logged several more miles on her silver-and-turquoise
walking shoes when she and her friend, Patti Lynch, meandered down Route
62 to North Reading.
In September, she plans to lace up her shoes and head south to Lynnfield’s two firehouses.
And
next year? She’s considering Topsfield and Boxford (one in the spring,
one in the fall). Eventually, her goal is to cover the whole region.
“I enjoy giving them my time,” she said.
It
was the Worcester Cold Storage Warehouse fire — and the deaths of six
firefighters battling the blaze — on Dec. 3, 1999, that inspired her
crusade.
“It was a senseless tragedy,” she lamented.
Having
several relatives on fire forces — including her late uncle, John
Monahan Sr., who was a captain; his son, John Monahan Jr., also a
captain in Salem; and another uncle, Charles Jodoin, a Revere
firefighter — profoundly affected her, and reinforced how dangerous the
job is.
But before walking,
she drove. She started in 2000, and has visited hundreds of stations in
Massachusetts and New Hampshire, as well as about 30 in California and
Florida while on vacation.
She
realized she could make more of an impact with her soles than with
wheels, and she did her first walk, to Salem’s five stations, in
September 2006 with her sister, Gail Corsetti.
Since
then, first with Corsetti, then with her friend Karen Shah, and now
with Lynch, 59, Picone has visited the fire departments in Beverly,
Danvers, Gloucester, Hamilton, Ipswich, Manchester-by-the-Sea,
Marblehead, Middleton, North Andover, Peabody, Rowley, Swampscott, and
Wenham. She typically tries to walk to two communities a year, one in
the spring and one in the fall, prefacing the visits with handwritten
letters to their chiefs.
In between, to stay in shape, she
walks about 1½ miles every day through her neighborhood, listening to
the birds and watching planes descend to Logan Airport. She’s a bit of
an aviation enthusiast; she has a 28-inch-long model airplane in her
basement, and can point out the types of commercial aircraft passing
overhead.
Because
she’s been to so many stations — and because she’ll often stop in on a
whim when driving through a place, as she plans to do this summer while
visiting Cape Cod — it’s hard for her to give an exact number. That’s
not what she keeps track of: She keeps track of the thanks, the hugs,
and the appreciation she receives when she reaches her destinations.
At
each station, she meets and talks with firefighters, is usually given a
tour, and hands out tokens emblazoned with a firefighter emblem on one
side and a prayer on the other.
“It does mean something to them,” she said. “It helps them realize that people appreciate what they do.”
This is a point she stressed to members of North Reading’s force last Friday.
It was 60 degrees when she and Lynch set out just after 9 a.m.
They
were equipped with two bottles of water, peanut butter crackers for a
snack, Excedrin for headaches, sunglasses, and a small plastic bag
filled with the tokens.
They
first passed through their manicured neighborhood on the edge of the
Putnamville Reservoir (starting off from Picone’s house with its fire
engine mailbox hand-carved by her father), then worked their way west
on Route 62.
As the road
wound along — in a couple of places sans sidewalks — the pair passed
houses, schools, businesses, sloping fields, wetlands, and country
clubs; investigated lilac bushes; and dodged poison ivy.
At 12:45 p.m. — 3 hours and 45 minutes later — they turned the bend into North Reading Center.
At the station, firefighter/EMT Matt Carroll met Picone and Lynch, shaking their hands.
“We appreciate what you did,” he said as he invited them in.
The rest of the men in the station — five in total — gathered around as they talked.
“I love what you people do,” Picone said as she handed out the tokens. “I have since I was 5 years old.”
It
was then, she recounted, that she learned just how quickly firefighters
respond to a call. On a dare from a boy, she pulled the switch on a
firebox. Instantly terrified, she threw her bike on the ground, sprinted
home, grabbed some cookies, and hid in a closet. All the while, the
sirens got closer, and the engines arrived within minutes.
Carroll, in turn, shared the burdens of the profession.
“It’s
a stressful job, that’s the truth,” he said. People are having “their
worst day in a long time when they call you. You absorb a lot of other
people’s stress.”
Then the
men led Picone and Lynch on a tour of the 1967 building, which operates
with four engines, two ambulances, and one ladder truck. Carroll showed
off a mural of firefighters climbing a ladder into a blinding cloud of
smoke, then took the pair into the truck bay lined with flaming red
lockers, one or two ajar to reveal a jumble of gear and photos of
daughters and wives.
Before she left, Picone even got to ride around the block in a firetruck, fulfilling a longtime wish.
“We
get thanks a lot on the job,” Carroll acknowledged later as Picone
prepared for the trip back (by car; her parents picked them up). “But
when people go out of their way, it makes it a little more special. What
she’s doing is simple, but effective.”
© Copyright 2012 Globe Newspaper Company.
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