The Flip

By Stephanie Spyropoulos

Today I ran into a mom whose son has worked his way up the ranks in a lifelong career as a local firefighter. Each time I have seen her, she has thanked me for taking a photo of her son. The decades-old image has become a keepsake and her eyes get misty and sparkle with pride when she talks about him.

My job is done. I feel as if I accomplished what I hoped; showing loved ones, children, and spouses what their firefighter’s day looked like.

I am proud of my unique career, which has come to a close as a female fire photographer on the South Shore.   

Having asthma and being repulsed by the smell of cigarettes, it was hard to see any elemental connection in my fascination with fire. The idea of lighting a candle completely terrified me as a child and sometimes it still does as an adult.  Perhaps my sense of security and self-protection broadened as I learned more about the fire service as a whole.  Maybe they were teaching me.

Around the age of 8 years old, I was truly empathic and I knew two things:  I wanted to be a writer and I was going to help firefighters.

My brother and I would watch “Emergency” a hit series in the 1970s about the lives of firefighters on and off the job. At the start of each episode, we argued who would play the role of paramedics John Gage and Roy DeSoto. We both could handle the job and had matching thermoses with the metal lunchboxes.

In the world of make-believe, I handed the stethoscope to the paramedics or helped them drive like hell to make a rescue in each episode. I felt the heat from the fire as they battled the ‘fake’ blaze on TV.

My family thought I had a vivid imagination. I promised that I would help them the same way a child made a birthday wish from the depth of my heart.

Several decades later I see how that unfolded.

Photographing fire scenes became a small part of my work as a newspaper journalist. The live fire scenes were art in the way of storytelling that editors loved to see, but I realized as time went on that my images were allowing families of firefighters to see behind the scenes.

The elements of bravery, rescue, and exhaustion are seen by the viewer but are not the only emotions that I felt when I captured the moments in my camera.

I was lucky enough to document the generation of local firefighters who are now retiring in numerous area towns. Several of them I have completed grade school with, a few I have gotten to know their families, and others I have seen healing in their lives albeit from afar.

I hope that the readers and viewers of Living Crue see what I felt in my soul. I consistently said a prayer for safety for the firefighters and myself and for those involved in whatever their call became.  It was just something I was meant to do drawn by faith and a promise to help each time I made my way to the perimeter of yellow fire tape.

I hope my images offer future advocacy that enhances the protection of firefighters faced with budget cuts, low staffing ratios, personal mental health and PTSD occurrences, and cancers due to job exposure.

A picture is worth one thousand words. I retired from this significant chapter, as I no longer go to fire scenes.  However, I will always say a prayer when I see the engines whiz by.