Old badge gets new life for firefighting family
Ryan Franzen always knew he'd become a Chicago firefighter.
His father, Jim Franzen, was a Chicago firefighter. And his grandfather Richard Franzen died in the line of duty.
"He was hurt after a fire in Englewood. He was holding on to the truck and somehow fell and he was in a coma," Ryan told me in an interview at his home the other day.
As he spoke, he held his grandfather's old fire helmet in his hands.
Richard Franzen never regained consciousness from that fall. He died a few months later, on April 14, 1965, leaving a wife and five young children.
To honor him, the city put Richard Franzen's badge, No. 4077, up on the wall of the fallen at the Chicago Fire Academy.
Growing up, he thought about it often, that badge on the wall, and dreamed of someday wearing his grandfather's number.
"Being a Chicago firefighter, it's just something I always wanted," he said. "My grandfather was a firefighter, my father. It's what I wanted."
As a boy, Ryan would wait for his father to come home and talk about fighting fires. He'd pester his dad with questions, or he'd question his dad's friends from the department.
"He didn't tell me all of it," Ryan said. "But I would always ask, 'What happened today? Did you fight a fire?' The Chicago Fire Department is the greatest in the world. The tradition they carry … just the way the department is, they carry a very high rep for themselves."
Brothers Ryan and Matthew grew up on the Southwest Side, and through Marist High School, and later, through college, and they knew what they would do with their lives.
In 2006, Ryan took the Fire Department admissions test. He took a job with the Plainfield Fire Department, and waited. And waited. Thousands take the tests when they're offered and only a handful are selected.
Finally, the brothers were given notice that they'd been accepted. Ryan was told last year that he would train to become a firefighter. Earlier this year, Matthew got his letter from the department. He would train to be a paramedic.
The training is serious and difficult, and I'm told that the up-and-overs — recruits running up one building, crossing to another, running down and repeating the circuit — are pure physical torture.
But it all begins with a welcome from the instructors when recruits are told they've won the lottery.
"They tell you that in the academy," said Ryan, 32. "They say your first day that you show up that, 'Congratulations, you've won the lottery.' And they tell you that throughout the academy."
Starting wages are a little more than $50,000 a year. The city benefits are good, and there is promise of a pension and an opportunity to work a second job and build a business in the trades.
But the lottery?
They run into fires, and through poisonous black smoke, orange flames that burn flesh or rip out lungs, and people screaming, chaos and fear and water all around.
And some fires end with badges up on the wall.
A few months before graduation from the academy, Ryan asked his instructors if he could be assigned the badge number of his grandfather.
"Nobody else knew that I would be putting in a request except for my wife," Ryan said. "I didn't want to say anything. I wanted it to be a surprise at graduation."
He was told to forget it.
"I was told that because his badge was up on the wall it was impossible to get his number, 'So just forget about it. It's not going to happen.' So I just forgot about it."
But his father didn't forget about it. He was proud of his sons following a family tradition. So without Ryan's knowledge, Jim Franzen contacted the department and asked about Grandpa Rich's badge number.
Officials said it was impossible, because the badge was on the wall.
But Jim knew better, and he told them the real story: The one on the wall was a replica. The real badge No. 4077 was safe at home.
It had been given to the family around the time Jim's father died. And they'd kept it safe all those years.
The Fire Academy graduation ceremonies were held at Navy Pier on Sept. 15, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel officiated. Firefighter recruits and paramedics graduated together, so Ryan and brother Matthew had the entire family in attendance.
The whole Franzen tribe showed. Ryan's wife, Robyn, was there of course, and Matthew's wife, Jenny. And Jim and mom Debbie and grandmother Marycae, Rich's widow — who later married another fireman. And there were cousins and friends.
You may not have been there to see them all, but if you grew up in the Chicago where working people live, you know them like you know your own face: neighborhood people together, smiling and nervous and proud of those two young men of theirs in the Grand Ballroom at Navy Pier, the mayor and top brass on the stage, the cadets all straight-backed and smiling.
"I walked across the stage, shook the mayor's hand and the commissioner's hand and walked across and shook a few other instructors' hands and got to the bottom of the stage," Ryan said.
By then he'd been given his new badge in a case.
"My dad was there and I gave him a big hug and started to walk back to my seat. I got halfway back to my seat and went, 'Oh, I wonder what badge number I got?'"
He opened the case and looked into it and read the number off the badge.
"4077. And I thought to myself, '4077? Why does that sound familiar?' Didn't even think there was a possibility that I would get it. That's why I kind of pushed it off in my head. Then it hit me. It's my grandfather's."
It wasn't merely the number they gave him. Ryan received the actual badge.
Not the replica up on the wall, but the real badge, the old one, the badge Grandpa Rich had carried, the badge that his father had kept safe.
And so it all rushed up at Ryan and his family, the memories and the emotions and the past and the burden of the legacy heavy in his hand.
Ryan looked up at his family across the room. They all knew and now he knew, too, that was Grandpa Rich's badge he was holding.
"He was full of joy," Jim Franzen recalled of his son, but then he couldn't continue. "I can't believe I'm being like this."
If connections between the generations of family mean anything to you, then you can believe it too. But he wasn't the only one overcome.
"I cried," Ryan said, laughing it off, knowing this admission will bring him endless grief at Engine 97 in Hegewisch where he's been assigned. "I definitely welled up."
Though the badge is old, he will not clean it. He'll have it on his uniform when he shows up for his first shift at the firehouse Saturday.
"I
haven't cleaned it or anything. I don't want to touch it. It's kind of a
thing in the Fire Department. The same with your helmet — if it gets
dirty, it's bad luck to clean it, so you never clean off your helmet. I
treat this the same way," Ryan said.His father, Jim Franzen, was a Chicago firefighter. And his grandfather Richard Franzen died in the line of duty.
"He was hurt after a fire in Englewood. He was holding on to the truck and somehow fell and he was in a coma," Ryan told me in an interview at his home the other day.
As he spoke, he held his grandfather's old fire helmet in his hands.
Richard Franzen never regained consciousness from that fall. He died a few months later, on April 14, 1965, leaving a wife and five young children.
To honor him, the city put Richard Franzen's badge, No. 4077, up on the wall of the fallen at the Chicago Fire Academy.
Growing up, he thought about it often, that badge on the wall, and dreamed of someday wearing his grandfather's number.
"Being a Chicago firefighter, it's just something I always wanted," he said. "My grandfather was a firefighter, my father. It's what I wanted."
As a boy, Ryan would wait for his father to come home and talk about fighting fires. He'd pester his dad with questions, or he'd question his dad's friends from the department.
"He didn't tell me all of it," Ryan said. "But I would always ask, 'What happened today? Did you fight a fire?' The Chicago Fire Department is the greatest in the world. The tradition they carry … just the way the department is, they carry a very high rep for themselves."
Brothers Ryan and Matthew grew up on the Southwest Side, and through Marist High School, and later, through college, and they knew what they would do with their lives.
In 2006, Ryan took the Fire Department admissions test. He took a job with the Plainfield Fire Department, and waited. And waited. Thousands take the tests when they're offered and only a handful are selected.
Finally, the brothers were given notice that they'd been accepted. Ryan was told last year that he would train to become a firefighter. Earlier this year, Matthew got his letter from the department. He would train to be a paramedic.
The training is serious and difficult, and I'm told that the up-and-overs — recruits running up one building, crossing to another, running down and repeating the circuit — are pure physical torture.
But it all begins with a welcome from the instructors when recruits are told they've won the lottery.
"They tell you that in the academy," said Ryan, 32. "They say your first day that you show up that, 'Congratulations, you've won the lottery.' And they tell you that throughout the academy."
Starting wages are a little more than $50,000 a year. The city benefits are good, and there is promise of a pension and an opportunity to work a second job and build a business in the trades.
But the lottery?
They run into fires, and through poisonous black smoke, orange flames that burn flesh or rip out lungs, and people screaming, chaos and fear and water all around.
And some fires end with badges up on the wall.
A few months before graduation from the academy, Ryan asked his instructors if he could be assigned the badge number of his grandfather.
"Nobody else knew that I would be putting in a request except for my wife," Ryan said. "I didn't want to say anything. I wanted it to be a surprise at graduation."
He was told to forget it.
"I was told that because his badge was up on the wall it was impossible to get his number, 'So just forget about it. It's not going to happen.' So I just forgot about it."
But his father didn't forget about it. He was proud of his sons following a family tradition. So without Ryan's knowledge, Jim Franzen contacted the department and asked about Grandpa Rich's badge number.
Officials said it was impossible, because the badge was on the wall.
But Jim knew better, and he told them the real story: The one on the wall was a replica. The real badge No. 4077 was safe at home.
It had been given to the family around the time Jim's father died. And they'd kept it safe all those years.
The Fire Academy graduation ceremonies were held at Navy Pier on Sept. 15, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel officiated. Firefighter recruits and paramedics graduated together, so Ryan and brother Matthew had the entire family in attendance.
The whole Franzen tribe showed. Ryan's wife, Robyn, was there of course, and Matthew's wife, Jenny. And Jim and mom Debbie and grandmother Marycae, Rich's widow — who later married another fireman. And there were cousins and friends.
You may not have been there to see them all, but if you grew up in the Chicago where working people live, you know them like you know your own face: neighborhood people together, smiling and nervous and proud of those two young men of theirs in the Grand Ballroom at Navy Pier, the mayor and top brass on the stage, the cadets all straight-backed and smiling.
"I walked across the stage, shook the mayor's hand and the commissioner's hand and walked across and shook a few other instructors' hands and got to the bottom of the stage," Ryan said.
By then he'd been given his new badge in a case.
"My dad was there and I gave him a big hug and started to walk back to my seat. I got halfway back to my seat and went, 'Oh, I wonder what badge number I got?'"
He opened the case and looked into it and read the number off the badge.
"4077. And I thought to myself, '4077? Why does that sound familiar?' Didn't even think there was a possibility that I would get it. That's why I kind of pushed it off in my head. Then it hit me. It's my grandfather's."
It wasn't merely the number they gave him. Ryan received the actual badge.
Not the replica up on the wall, but the real badge, the old one, the badge Grandpa Rich had carried, the badge that his father had kept safe.
And so it all rushed up at Ryan and his family, the memories and the emotions and the past and the burden of the legacy heavy in his hand.
Ryan looked up at his family across the room. They all knew and now he knew, too, that was Grandpa Rich's badge he was holding.
"He was full of joy," Jim Franzen recalled of his son, but then he couldn't continue. "I can't believe I'm being like this."
If connections between the generations of family mean anything to you, then you can believe it too. But he wasn't the only one overcome.
"I cried," Ryan said, laughing it off, knowing this admission will bring him endless grief at Engine 97 in Hegewisch where he's been assigned. "I definitely welled up."
Though the badge is old, he will not clean it. He'll have it on his uniform when he shows up for his first shift at the firehouse Saturday.
He showed me the badge. It is heavy and old.
As Ryan held it, the badge caught the afternoon sun and you could almost see the light bending from it, bending through time and past generations: to 1965 and the fall from the truck and later in some dark, safe place, peered at by a boy who'd lost his father, and catching light again, to the son and then the grandson, the light of it passing from hand to hand to hand of a Chicago family.
Ryan Franzen didn't have to polish that badge at all.
It shone brightly enough.
jskass@tribune.com
Twitter @John_Kass
Copyright © 2014, Chicago Tribune
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