Disabled hero chases dream to be a hub firefighter
Published: August 8, 2006
Brian Fountaine has “smoke in his blood,” a condition that was passed on to him by his father and grandfather, two Boston firefighters who spent their lives in service to our city.
Fountaine, 24, has every intention of becoming the third generation in that heroic bloodline, a goal he set as a determined little boy, one of the many kids in Dorchester who played in his daddy’s BFD bunker gear.
But Fountaine may become the first Boston firefighter to work with prosthetic feet. The Army sergeant lost his lower legs in a bomb blast in Iraq on June 8.
It was a mission Fountaine, one of the youngest tank commanders in Iraq, had undertaken countless times during two tours of duty with the First Brigade Combat Team of the Fourth Infantry Division.
He and his team were scouting a safe route for their convoy when their Humvee rolled over a pressure plate, triggering blasts from two buried bombs.
Fountaine was blown out of the truck and came to face-down in the dirt with a searing pain ripping through his body. His legs were bloody stumps and he was losing consciousness.
He took one look at the mangled flesh, tore his belt from his pants and pulled it tight below his knees. His left ribcage had a gaping hole, and he was having trouble breathing because of a collapsed lung.
His driver was also badly hurt and lost a leg. His gunner was not seriously injured.
“I was out for 20 seconds. When I came to, I heard my driver screaming, ‘My leg! My leg!’ He never stopped screaming,” Fountaine said in a phone interview from his bed at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where he will be fitted with prosthetics
“There was this pain, a burning pain. I can’t even find words for the pain,” he said.
Fountaine said he refuses to be defeated by the loss of his legs, despite awful thoughts like this one: “I can never go to Nantasket Beach and put my feet in the sand.”
That strength, he said, comes from his father.
His dad, Paul Fountaine, is a decorated 26-year BFD veteran assigned to Rescue 2 in Egleston Square. The elder Fountaine is also a veteran of the Vietnam War.
“I was patriotic before Sept. 11,” said Brian Fountaine, who enlisted in April 2001. “I didn’t need a tragedy like that to know I am an American and that it is my duty to serve my country. I learned it from my dad.”
Fountaine said he remains as dedicated to his dream of becoming a Boston firefighter now as he was as a little boy riding the rig with his father.
“You have to stay positive about things. I can’t wait to get in the firehouse with my dad again, and I will do everything I can to join the Boston Fire Department,” Fountaine said.
“I might not be the guy that runs into the building to save the little girl like I always wanted to be, but there are other things I can do. My father is a firefigher, his father was a firefighter. I have smoke in the blood,” he said. “It’s a dream I have had since I was a kid that I will fulfill.”
There is no reason why Fountaine should not fulfill it, either.
Several wounded soldiers ran the New York City marathon this year with prosthetic legs. Last year, a Vancouver, British Columbia, firefighter who lost all his fingers to frostbite while climbing Canada’s highest mountain returned to full duty with heat-resistant prosthetic fingers.
No matter what Fontaine’s physical ability, he has the support of Local 718, the Boston Firefighters Union, who will do whatever they can to add him to their ranks, its president Ed Kelly told me.
Already they have planned a time in Fountaine’s honor at Florian Hall on Sept. 17. Jakes from across the city have donated BFD T-shirts from their firehouses to be shipped to wounded soldiers at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Now the city just needs to do the right thing. When Brian Fountaine returns to Dorchester this month, Mayor Thomas M. Menino should personally pin a Fire Department shield on his chest.
His actions prove that he has the courage, and the character, to become one of Boston’s Bravest.
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