This has been a horrible week. On April 7th one of our neighboring fire departments, the Fort Osage Fire Protection District, lost Assistant Chief Harold Hollingsworth in a line of duty death. I can only echo everyone else's sentiment that this is a terrible loss for the community and his family. As one of the firefighters I work with said, "You see this stuff in movies and you always think it won't happen to you or to someone you know." And then one night it does, and it just wallops you.
I was talking to a good friend about it and said, "I don't really know what to say about it when people ask me. We went to high school together and I know his family, but not all that well. I can tell you this, though: maybe somewhere in the world there is someone who didn't like Harold Hollingsworth, but if there is, we've never heard of it. Everybody just loved and respected the guy so much. He was so kind and smart and such a good guy, but he wasn't all sanctimonious about himself. He was funny. He was really, really funny." My friend thought about that for a minute, and then he said, "I think that's as good a eulogy to him as I've heard."
Godspeed, Chief Hollingsworth.