BY JANE PRENDERGAST
The Cincinnati Enquirer
INDEPENDENCE -- There's a firefighter in Independence who has only one leg now. Lost the other to bone cancer.
Jeff Rennekamp's pretty matter-of-fact about the turn his life took this summer: the whole thing stinks, yeah, but he'll get through it just fine, thanks.
He doesn't want pity. He doesn't want stories about him to be all gloom and doom or talk about fake legs.
So this one won't be. Instead, it'll be about firefighters, friendship and family.
Mr. Rennekamp, 25, goes to the fire station on crutches now. His left hip is still healing from the amputation in July, so it'll be a while before he gets his new leg. Until then, he can't be a firefighter or go back to his other job, as a registered nurse at St. Elizabeth. But he shows up at the firehouse regularly anyway to see and eat with the guys on his old shift.
Every third calendar day they work their 24 hours, and their table usually offers the kind of stick-to-your-ribs food Mr. Rennekamp needs to help him gain weight.
One of the gang
One recent lunch -- chicken noodle soup, cheddar dogs and Cheetos -- fell a little short. The firefighters' explanation: Mr. Rennekamp mooches too much anyway. So he gets what he gets.
They invite him to eat now, they say, only because he still doesn't eat much. As he starts to, they claim they plan to kick him out. No freebies for slackers.
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IF YOU GO
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Tonight's fund-raiser is at Coyote's in Fort Mitchell, 7 to midnight. Tickets, $10 each, are available at the door. Contributions can be sent to the Jeff Rennekamp Benefit Fund, Independence Fire District, P.O. Box 175, Independence 41051. |
All the joking, the harassment -- it might not seem as if they're glad to see him. Not true. They actually take time out from the teasing to say what he means to them. The disease has brought that to the forefront. They're thrilled that his doctors at the Mayo Clinic think they got all the cancer. Tonight, there's a fund-raiser for him.
"Our shift is very close," explained Phil Dietz. "We talk things out. We'd sit up at night and talk to him about it.
"It just makes you think about what's important."
You'd think men who do what they do for a living would already have a good handle on that. And they did. They just didn't think as much about it as they do now.
"The biggest thing is his determination," said Jeff Armstrong, captain of Shift 3. "He's shown me what you can get through."
Fire Chief Rick Messingschlager thinks Mr. Rennekamp's experience has brought out good qualities in every firefighter on the shift. "It brought the shift closer together," he said. "They've developed a real brotherhood and a family attitude, which I think they'll take back to their families."
The Rev. Paul Berschied of St. Cecelia Catholic Church is duly impressed. He remembered a special Mass for the parish's sick members held the day before the amputation. Mr. Rennekamp was already at the Mayo Clinic.
"Gosh, I guess most of the fire department came," he said. "They marched down from the fire department to the church, as a unit. It was a very emotional time to see all these young men and women. "They should be highly commended. They have just stayed as close to Jeff as they could. It has been very uplifting for the whole parish."
Even so, the priest was concerned about how Mr. Rennekamp would fit in after the surgery, about whether the other firefighters could get used to their friend without a left leg.
One for all, all for one
But this is the bunch whose annual fishing trip to Cumberland grows to as many as 50 people. The group whose sixth annual Keeneland excursion needs three buses this year to accommodate everyone.
The priest's concerns were short-lived. Mr. Rennekamp will be at both.
"You can tell it's just as natural as it could be with them," the priest said. "As if Jeff had just started out that way."
