An update: Captain Pete Smith’s funeral, Captain Bishop is coming back to work, and where I have been

Thanks to all of you all who called to offer help and prayers while I was in the hospital. For those of you who don’t know, I was hospitalized with viral meningitis for a couple of days. I am recovering at home now. I think the worst is behind me.

Captain Bishop will be returning to work soon. The word I got is that he will be our new Captain at Station 13 C-Shift. I look forward to seeing him back on the job and working with him the same.

Unfortunately, I was unable to make it to Captain Smith’s funeral service. I wanted to add something to the previous post which contained his obituary.

I met Captain Smith, Pete as most of us knew him, when I began working at the Credit Union about 3 years ago. Pete would make the trek down the street to station 8 everyday. Rain, Snow, or Sleet he would come down and sit and talk. More often than not, someone would be waiting with a question for him. At the time he was around 92 years old. Pete would often climb the stairs to the Credit Union just to say hi.

Just like all of the other retirees who stop in to say hi to stations across the City, Pete always had my attention, unless I was otherwise busy. The big difference with Pete is that there is only 1 firefighter left working from before he retired. Therefore, most of what Pete knew of the job and lifestyle has changed many times since he left.

Pete was great with stories. He had plenty of them. The most recent times I saw Pete was when his son brought him by the party we had at Station #3 before it closed, and just a couple weeks ago his son in law brought him by station 8 to the credit union. We talked for several minutes and then they left.