FIREWIRE Magazine Winter 2019: Celebrating 5 Years | Page 12

MEMBERS
Originally published in Fall 2015
MEMBERS
One of the themes in our organization is the realization
of how good we have it, for the large part, in terms of
the kind of folks we get to be around. The problem is that
we are so many in number, and often so far flung, that no
matter how many new people we meet, there are so many
more we won’t ever really get to know well.
So this magazine’s greatest task is to help us learn one
another’s stories. This section highlights two of those ef-
forts; the first, a bio of Engineer Sitha Tan, illustrates his
family’s astonishing—and tragic— journey during the first
years of his life in Cambodia. Contrasting these events
with what he has brought to his new country, family and
workplace is remarkable.
The second story is about a different kind of journey,
when in the summer of 2017 four of our members par-
ticipated in the annual Race Across America bicycle en-
durance event. With over a dozen support crew (largely
drawn from 935’s ranks), along with two chase vehicles,
two large motor homes and almost zero sleep, the team
made it from Oceanside to Annapolis, Md., in seven and
a half days. Yet the race was merely the end-product of
over a year’s work. From training to fundraising, organiz-
ing and public relations, what became known as Team Fire
Velo Norton Strong showed what happens when we come
together to support one another.
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2015 marks the 40th anniversary of the start of that horror, and this
summer Tan traveled with his family back there, to a country trying
to forget its past as it forges its future. The following story tells of
Sitha’s memory of escape from the revolution and how his former
identities-war casualty, refugee, immigrant-have informed his
current roles as American citizen, father, husband and of
course, firefighter (Cont. on the following page).
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FIREWIRE • Five Year Anniversary
Winter 2019 • FIREWIRE
13