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Fallen Roscoe fire captain honored at annual service
Business editor
mbradwell@observer-reporter.com
HOUSTON - Under bright sunshine and deep blue October skies, area firefighters remembered one of their own Sunday, placing a memorial brick in a walkway for Roscoe Fire Capt. Sean T. Whiten, who died in August in the line of duty.
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Whiten, 47, of Stockdale, suffered a fatal heart attack Aug. 9 after collapsing at Westmoreland County Community College's fire school near Smithton, where he was instructing a class.
The 100 firefighters, family and friends who gathered Sunday to honor Whiten were part of National Fallen Firefighters Day, which annually remembers the men and women who die fighting the estimated 1.6 million fires in the U.S. each year. Most, like Whiten, are volunteers.
Whiten's son Sean, who also serves with Roscoe VFD, asked the audience to celebrate his father's life.
When he was growing up, Whiten said, he was like a lot of other kids who were big fans of Superman, except that his hero lived with him.
"My dad was Superman," he said. "As far back as I can remember, it was about firefighting."
He said his father often would work a three-day shift, only to return home to fight a fire or make an ambulance run.
"I think he was teaching my mother and me to be strong, because someday he would take the longest shift," he said.
Whiten said he believed his father, who was trained as an engineer, probably would have told him he wanted to be a teacher.
"As far as I'm concerned, he was a teacher all of his life," he said.
Pastor Joseph Toomey, another of Whiten's friends, echoed Whiten's son's description of his father, noting that Whiten had served as both chief and later captain of Roscoe VFD and also served on a number of related fire and public safety initiatives, including HAZMAT and the Terrorism Task Force and as an instructor at fire academies.
"No one loved firefighting and helping others in this noble career more than Sean Whiten," Toomey said. "It was his purpose, his calling in life."
Noting that more than 1,000 people came to Whiten's funeral in August, Toomey said he would like to have seen more attend Sunday's ceremony.
"The whole county should be here; the whole county should be giving thanks to firefighters," he said, adding that people tend to take firefighters for granted.
George Coleman, Pennsylvania State Firemens Association chaplain, who read the names of 22 fallen firefighters from Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio over the past several years, asked firefighters to take up the work of those who gave their lives selflessly while saving others.
"Let us not let the sorrow and sadness overcome the day," Coleman said, reminding the audience that it was time "to do their unfinished work and not to do it for ourselves but to do what's right for the people."
