Clearwater Beach, Florida: Everyday Heroes: Brotherhood of Heroes

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This past Monday, I was out on safari, photo safari, and ended up at a couple of Fire Stations, with a mind to get pictures of Fire Engines. Well, I got a lot more than that. When I stopped in at the Clearwater Fire Department on Clearwater Beach, Station 46, I met Firefighters Steve and Nathan. What a couple of great guys. They were super outgoing and accommodating to my photo safari mission.

They told me about their 'patch wall', which sounded pretty cool. So we stepped into the office to get a look, and maybe take a picture. WHOA!! It was awesome. I mean, not just a few patches... but a WALL OF PATCHES! The photo above is just one half of the main wall. They have another smaller section on another wall just to the right. So what's it all about? It's like this... When firefighters come here on vacation, a lot of them carry badges from their home station with them. They trade their home badges for badges from here! The end result is that this wall is covered with firefighter badges from all over the country, and the world!

I originally wanted to get them all in one picture, but then I realized that you wouldn't be able to make them out individually. So I took it in sections. This picture is not really big enough to get good detail, but if you click on it, you will get a really big version. Then you can see it a little better. But be forewarned... it is a big file, that larger picture, about 2mb, so it might take a little while to load.

Another thing I noticed while in these two fire stations is that they both featured some sort of remembrance of the firefighters who died on 9/11. They truly seem like a Brotherhood of Heroes, EVERYday Heroes, to me, and I was honored to meet them.

Stayed tuned for more about these fire fighting heroes. Pop over to Clearwater Daily Photo for today's post on Station 48.

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If you would like to see more of this area, check out Dunedin Daily Photo, and Clearwater Daily Photo. If you enjoy photography, check out my photography blog. Thanks for coming today, I hope you enjoyed your mini-vacation to Clearwater Beach, Florida!