One thing that's great about firefighters: If they don't have the equipment they desperately need, they don't have the help, they don't care. They'll do it on their own.
Having dealt with a lot of real firefighters, I know there are a lot of guys who, for lack of a better term, become addicted to the grief because it has kept them connected to these guys that they felt responsible for having lost.
My charity is in the business of helping firefighters in any way that we can. For instance, after 9/11 we were the second-fastest charity to raise and distribute money to the widows and surviving family members of the 343 firefighters who died that day.
Most of the women placed in the fire department here in New York never passed the physical test. And a fat guy or a short guy, or anybody not passing the test in a life-or-death job, leads to friction.
It would be great if firefighters across the country had the guarantee that they would be making enough money to support their family right from the get-go, but that's not the case.
Firefighters are some of the most selfless public servants you will ever encounter.
In addition to my cousin, there were 30 or 40 guys I grew up with who became firefighters as well. So, I've been around firefighters all my life.
Most people don't know how underpaid and often ill-equipped urban fire departments are across North America.
Firefighters don't go on strike.
Once you have a firefighter in your family, your family and the families from his crew become one big extended family.
What firefighters and people in our military and cops do is separate from what the rest of us do; basically these people say, 'I'm going to protect all these strangers.'
Most of the stories that we do are true stories from the last 20 years in the fire department, both funny and tragic,