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Saving lives — it comes with the territory
By Joe Bauman
Deseret News staff writer
Lea Ann Parsley of Granville, Ohio, a 33-year-old skeleton champion and a firefighter since age 16, was among the athletes chosen to carry the "ground zero flag" during the Olympic opening ceremonies.
She walked into Rice-Eccles Stadium beside New York firefighters, police officers and members of the Port Authority who risked their lives at the World Trade Center. As an athlete, Parsley said, she was proud "to represent my brothers and sisters in the fire service."
Parsley herself has earned laurels as a heroic firefighter. She gave this account of the rescues for which she won the Ohio Firefighter of the Year award in 1999:
When she and the rest of the crew from the Plain Township, Ohio, Fire Department, arrived at the scene of a mobile home fire, another crew already had begun rescue operations.
"But they were having difficulties getting the first victim out. So I hopped in to help. We got her (an invalid 14-year-old girl) out into the front yard, and that's when she said her mother was still inside. . . .
"The guy I was helping was out of air so I had to go back in by myself. . . . I don't know if I would have been as ready to hop through had I not known that my rest of my crew was also in. They were layin' down a hose line and keeping the room as protected as possible. And so I felt the risk was OK.
"I mean, so I hopped back in. And the conditions were deteriorating but not to the point where we couldn't do our job. So we went in and I located the mother and brought her back over (to) the window and ended up . . . doin' the flop.
"It was really the only way to get her out of the house. The rest of the house was fully consumed by fire and that was about the only room that was left intact and was viable for us to be in. So the window was the only way out.
"Thank goodness it was a first-floor bedroom. . . . We had basically knocked out the window, but we still had a lot of glass and metal and stuff that was in the window casing, so the only way to keep them from getting further injury was to put them on my lap and then I sort of just put a bear hug around them, and like a scuba diver would flop off the back of the boat," they went out the window backwards.
"We just sort of flopped out the window and they were able to land on top of me."
Both victims survived the blaze. Following the Olympics, Parsley said, she will go back to battling fires.
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February 14, 2002
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