Memorial for a Fallen Firefighter

He was so honest he admitted to feeding the dog too many treats. He had the sort of sense of humor that when he had to respond to a fire at the zoo, he asked his superior with a straight face, “Would you like me to bring the bolt cutters and let all the animals out?” Additionally, he had such a remarkable intelligence that Santa Barbara City Fire Chief Pat McElroy said, “He was the future of the fire department. He was a star.”

These were just a few of the stories told about Dan Corrigan, the 35-year-old firefighter found dead in his car on March 4 at the Santa Barbara Airport’s fire station, at his public memorial on Friday afternoon. About 300 people, including all 100 uniformed firefighters from the SBCFD, gathered in the rotunda at the Fess Parker Doubletree Resort to talk about Corrigan, because “telling Dan stories” was what his colleagues started doing when they learned he had passed, and it was the only way they knew how to cope with the astonishing pain of his unexpected loss.

All the speakers at the memorial emphasized — through halting speech and tears behind sunglasses in the blistering afternoon sun — the impact that Corrigan’s love, humor, intelligence, and dedication had on those he cared about. His former Fresno colleague Karey Wedemeyer told of how her first instinct was to hug him, how she often had to remind him to go home instead of mopping the floors and cleaning the engines, and that he was “the kind of man every firefighter would want on their rig.” His childhood best friend, Jerry Hulse, said Corrigan was a “super-dad” and that “we will continue to be best friends for life.”