3NEWS visited Fire Station 14 on Thursday for a look at what Thanksgiving looks like for firefighters who are on call throughout the holiday.<\/p>\n
While families across the Coastal Bend gathered around the table for Thanksgiving, first responders spent the day on duty, ensuring the community stayed safe.<\/p>\n
3NEWS visited Fire Station 14 on Thursday for a look at what Thanksgiving looks like for firefighters who are on call throughout the holiday.<\/p>\n
Across the city, many families joined their loved ones at fire stations, celebrating a holiday that may look a little different, but is still rooted in family, gratitude and togetherness.<\/p>\n
At Fire Station 14, crews who typically battle flames spent part of their holiday working with them in the kitchen instead.<\/p>\n
“Through the years we’ve worked many holidays,” Kerry Goodman said.<\/p>\n
Goodman, a fire engineer and paramedic, has been with the Corpus Christi Fire Department for nearly 34 years, many of them spent on call.<\/p>\n
“We work a 24\/48 schedule, so basically a third of our working lives is spent with these crews,” Goodman said.<\/p>\n
He said he\u2019s grateful for the camaraderie and the second family he\u2019s gained through the department.<\/p>\n
“We call each other brothers and sisters, and the fire service is a big family, so we always tell people when they come into the department that they just gained 400 siblings,” Goodman said.<\/p>\n
That support becomes especially meaningful during the holidays, when firefighters are having to be away from home.<\/p>\n
“Working the holidays, we do get a chance to work with our families in and out. And then, special days we have the opportunity to have our closer families, more intimate families, come and have dinner with us or spend some time with us in the station,” Goodman said.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, that\u2019s exactly what happened. Firefighters and their loved ones shared a joint Thanksgiving meal, bringing both families together under one roof.<\/p>\n
For firefighter Payton Beck, having his wife and baby join him at the station was something to be thankful for.<\/p>\n
“It is a load that we all carry, and just being able to spend that time with family makes it that much better,” Beck said. “At the station with us too, so all the family comes together just like any other Thanksgiving.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
And while the shared meal was meaningful, firefighters always remained ready for the next emergency.<\/p>\n
“If a call were to come in, we would just put our forks down and put our gear on and get on the trucks and respond to the call,” Goodman said.<\/p>\n
Goodman said this Thanksgiving, he remains grateful for a career that has allowed him to serve others, as he plans to retire in January after serving the Coastal Bend for 34 years.<\/p>\n
“It’s been an honor to serve the community and to be able to respond to people when it’s maybe not their best day, but to be able to try to make their instance a little better,” Goodman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"3NEWS visited Fire Station 14 on Thursday for a look at what Thanksgiving looks like for firefighters who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":{"0":"post-68098","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-corpus-christi","8":"tag-corpus-christi","9":"tag-corpus-christi-headlines","10":"tag-corpus-christi-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}