GeoCities.us » Heartland » Valley

Get your FREE home page!

LINE OF DUTY DEATH FIREFIGHTER TROY A. EKSTROM Carver Falls Volunteer Fire Department · Badge 14 July 2, 1967 – November 14, 1998 Rest easy, brother. We have it from here.

My name is Duane Rasmussen. I'm a lieutenant with the Carver Falls Volunteer Fire Department in central Minnesota, and I've been on the department nineteen years. Troy Ekstrom was on my crew, and he was my friend. On November 14 of last year we went into a burning house together, and I came out and he didn't. I'm not much of a writer. The guys asked me to put this page together because a lot of people from other departments, from all over the country, have been asking about Troy and about his family, and this seemed like the easiest way to tell everybody at once. So this is for them, and for Heidi and the kids, and for Troy.

WHO TROY WAS Troy grew up here. Played nose tackle for the high school, married Heidi, his sweetheart since tenth grade, and went to work as a diesel mechanic at the co-op, where he worked his whole life. He joined the department in 1989 when he was 22, and got his EMT certification two years later. He was the guy who could fix anything. When the pump on our old Engine 2 quit in the middle of a grass fire in 1994, Troy had it running again in twenty minutes with a part out of the back of his own pickup. He ran the grill at every pancake breakfast we ever had. He coached T-ball. He was the loudest Vikings fan in three counties, and he never got to see the rest of that 15-and-1 season. Considering how the Atlanta game ended in January, some of the guys say maybe that was a mercy. Troy would have laughed at that. He left his wife Heidi, their son Jacob, who is six, and their daughter Lily, who turned three in August, along with his folks, two brothers, and about thirty guys who would have walked into anything with him.

NOVEMBER 14, 1998 The pagers went off at 4:12 on a Saturday morning for a house fire at a farm west of town. A neighbor had called it in and said the old man who lived there might still be inside. Troy and I took a hose line in through the kitchen door to search for him. The fire had been burning a long time in the basement underneath us, where we couldn't see it. The kitchen floor gave way. I'm not going to write any more about that part. What I will tell you is that the old man wasn't home that night. He was staying with his daughter in St. Cloud. We went in because we thought someone was in there, and that's what we do, and Troy would do it again tomorrow. I know that about him the way I know my own name. The State Fire Marshal's office investigated. It was old wiring in the basement. Nobody did anything wrong. It doesn't help as much as you'd think.

THE FUNERAL We buried Troy on Thursday, November 19. More than sixty departments came, some of them from Wisconsin and the Dakotas, and the trucks were lined up nose to tail for a mile down the highway into town. Every badge had a black band across it. The pipe band came up from the Cities. Troy rode to the cemetery on the hose bed of Engine 2, the same truck he kept running for nine years, with his helmet on top of the casket. At the graveside, the bell was rung the old way, three sets of five, for the last alarm. That tradition goes back to the days when alarms came over a telegraph bell, and five rings meant a firefighter had died. A man from our department folded the flag and gave it to Heidi. Jacob held his daddy's helmet the whole time and would not let anybody take it from him. I want to thank every department that sent people and trucks, and all the wives and moms who fed about six hundred people in the church basement afterward, and the ladies' auxiliary from the next town over, who showed up with forty hotdishes nobody asked them to bring.

THIS OCTOBER: EMMITSBURG Every October, the firefighters who died in the line of duty the year before are honored at the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Troy's name will be read there this year. Heidi and the kids are going, and six of us are driving out with them in two vans, straight through. If you are going too, look for the guys in the Carver Falls shirts. Come say hello. We'd be glad to meet you.

WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR TROY Check your smoke detectors. Tonight. Push the button. Change the batteries when you change your clocks this fall. Know two ways out of every room in your house, and have a meeting place outside. Practice it with your kids. If you live in the country, make sure your fire number sign is up at the end of your driveway where we can see it in the dark. Minutes matter. Volunteer. Most fire departments in this country are volunteer, and almost all of us are short-handed. Stop by your local station and ask. Troy would like that better than flowers. For the kids: an education fund for Jacob and Lily has been set up at the bank in Carver Falls. E-mail me and I'll send you the address.

You are visitor since December 1998. Thank you for remembering him. Lt. Duane Rasmussen, Carver Falls VFD [email protected] Last updated: Saturday, September 18, 1999 © 1999 Duane Rasmussen, for the members of the Carver Falls Volunteer Fire Department