- Bob Dylan, Brownsville Girl
As I believe I have mentioned before, training for an Ironman is hardly an individual undertaking. Sure, you put in the training hours alone and become extremely self-centered for the better part of a year, but you have to look around at the support network that makes it all possible. The most obvious connection is family. Coordinating schedules, making appointments and plans around training schedules, laundry, cooking, shopping... the list goes on and on. Family is just as involved in your preparation for this race as you are.
The next ring of supporters encompasses like-minded people that are training for or have completed a similar event. This is another group that you don't want to let down. No one wants to run alone on a cold, rainy Thursday morning, so you get out of bed to join them. By the end of it you remind yourself that there's really no such thing as a bad run, and you can't wait to meet up with them again on the weekend or the next week. It's also part misery loves company. Don't complain about your training, because they don't want to hear it, and you're not going to get a shoulder to cry on. That shoulder is leaving you behind and doing hill repeats, so get going. We all want the others to find success in their respective endeavors and are cheering in spirit even if we're not on the sidelines.
The outer-most ring of the support network is the most intriguing, because more often than not this group isn't even aware of how they're helping you. It may be something so minor that you overlook it as well. Earlier this month I lost part of that network. Luckily, I'd made some inroads in the past year and got to know a wonderful person along the way.
I first met J.D. Hogg six years ago at our firehouse. The company was going through a rough transition as we closed down our social room and looked to distance ourselves from the way things used to be. Unfortunately, some of the old guard, J.D. included, didn't want to go down without a fight. Just how entrenched was the "bar first" mentality? The current layout of the fire station was dictated by the fact that the company wouldn't close down the bar to build the new station. Anyway, we closed the bar, feelings were hurt, some guys swore that they would never come back and walked out.
I didn't see J.D. again until last season when I joined the local gym. He opened the gym at 5:00 every weekday and was more dedicated than the U.S. Postal Service. He always got there. Bad weather coming in overnight? He slept over. I noticed one morning that he was wearing a King of Prussia Fire shirt, and I introduced myself as a lieutenant at the station. That broke the ice. Until that point the only acknowledgement I had ever received was a grunt or a nod. He wasn't one for chit chat. But we got to know each other slowly. He started to ask about the firehouse and recent calls.
Last summer one of our firefighters, Lt. Rickey Martin (no really, that's his name), had the idea of having a reunion for all the former members we could track down. You'd think that a bunch of guys running a volunteer firehouse would keep exact records on the whereabouts of everyone that's hopped on one of our trucks. You're wrong. There was a lot of homework to do. Not being from the area, I didn't know anyone on the list except for J.D. I promised to deliver an invitation to him the next time I saw him. I did, he looked at it, said thanks and that was about it.
The next week though he told me he'd replied. And then every time I left after a workout he told me how much he was looking forward to it. He wanted to make sure that I was going to be there. I can't remember the exact conflict I had, but I knew I couldn't be there the whole time. I made it there by the end and found J.D. He was so happy to be there and hanging out with guys he used to run calls with. J.D. introduced me to his wife and he went right back to trading war stories with friends he hadn't seen in years. I was happy for him.
This season started up the same as last year with early mornings made up of swim workouts. I had taken a few months off and hadn't seen J.D. for a while. We caught up for a bit, but he had his rounds to make at the gym, and I had a workout waiting. It was pretty obvious though that some health issues were catching up with him. Some days he was a bit slow getting there in the morning. There were other days in bad weather we had to help him out of his car and across the parking lot. The regular 5:00 crowd made sure to thank him for his dedication. It meant a lot to us.
Then one day no one was there right away to open up. Word came that J.D. was sick and in the hospital. Details were sparse and news wasn't forthcoming. I made sure to pass word around the firehouse that one of our life members was in intensive care. Management at the gym couldn't help as they didn't know any more. The more we tried to reach out, the more we realized how hard it was to track this guy down. We argued at the firehouse. One group said he lived a few blocks from the station, others said he lived in Havertown. It was a trick question as he had houses in both places. Then there was the story that he was our resident Fred Rogers - a former special ops soldier with a highly classified record. We couldn't disprove it.
J.D. passed away on March 1st. We didn't learn of it until about a week later. There was no ceremony, no representation from the firehouse, nothing, because we didn't know. Not the way we would have wanted it, but not much we could do.
The gym finally posted an obituary at the front desk. It thanked Kingsley M. Weest, Jr. for his years of service.
