Today's (12-26-05) Oklahoman

[Keith]

If you get a chance, take a look at the Oklahoman this morning, page 17A. Yesterday, the Citizen's Fire Academy Alumni Association took (CFAAA) breakfast to all 36 of the OKC fire stations in the Okla. City, as a way to show our appreciation to the firefighters for working on Christmas day and having to be away from their families.

The Oklahoman reporter, Jesse Olivarez, had shown interest in the CFAAA in the last couple of months, and since I am the newsletter editor for the CFAAA monthly newsletter, I have been e-mailing him copies of our newsletter, and keeping in touch with him. I think because of this, he decided to do the story. It's a great boost for the CFAAA.

I would have copied and pasted the story and the picture on the forum, however, for some reason, copying and pasting from the Oklahoman website has never worked for me. If someone else knows how to do it, then please do .

[Doug Loudenback]

The Oklahoman's pages don't lend themselves to easy copy/paste, but it's doable.

Here's the link, Keith: http://newsok.com/article/1715521/?template=news/main

Fire academy grads bring breakfast to firefighters
By Jesse Olivarez
The Oklahoman

Although he wasn't wearing a red suit or traveling in a toy-laden sleigh, Keith Sossamon played his own version of Santa Claus, spending Christmas morning bringing cheer to others.

On Sunday morning, Sossamon and almost 40 members of the Oklahoma City Citizen's Fire Academy Alumni Association stopped by all of the city's 36 fire stations to deliver breakfast to all of the firefighters working Christmas Day.

Their deliveries included eggs, sausage, biscuits, pancake mix, syrup and orange juice.

The firefighters cooked the food when they had a chance.

Giving back

"This is a way of giving back to the firefighters that spend their holiday working instead of being home with their families," said Sossamon, who was delivering groceries to the stations for the second year in a row.

Fire Maj. Mike Hardy just had come back to his fire station near SW 44 and Pennsylvania Avenue after responding to a medical call when Sossamon arrived with the food.

His smile stretched ear-to-ear as he rummaged through the grocery-laden sack laying on the station's kitchen counter.

"It's like a Christmas present waiting for us when we come in," said Hardy. "I'm glad to see there are so many people interested in what's going on around the fire department."

Fire Lt. Carl Cobb agreed.

"It's wonderful that they'll take the time out of their Christmas to bring us food during a time when they could be spending it with their family," Cobb said. "It's very generous."

Cobb started his day at 4 a.m. so he could open Christmas gifts with his wife and two young sons. He said being away from his family during the holiday is hard, but added that knowing the community cares about firefighters makes the day more tolerable.

"There is always an outpouring of help from the people here in Oklahoma" firefighter David Spaeth said. "Whatever the situation is, the people get involved."

After deciding what the Christmas Day breakfast menu would be for his station, Maj. Hardy began cooking the fresh groceries that Sossamon had just delivered.

"Of course we'd like to be at home with family today but we have a job to do," Hardy said. "It's great knowing somebody appreciates what we do."

Great story, and Great JOB, Keith!!!

[Karried]

Keith, I pasted the article on another thread but all you have to do is from the article page - click Print and instead of printing it, just highlight and copy & paste it that way.. very easy once it's in the Print window...