BY MARK KONKOL / Chicago Sun Times / Jan 15, 2012
Will Caviness ran.
He ran to work in the morning. He ran home at night.
He ran pushing his baby daughter in a stroller — 15 miles at a time.
He ran in the sweltering summer heat — 95 degrees and humid.
And he could fly — six and a half minutes a mile.
“I would see him running all over,” Will’s older brother Sean Caviness said. “I’d be driving 10 miles from home, and I’d see him running on a side street. He ran everywhere.”
He ran the Chicago marathon on Oct. 9.
Sean was there with Will’s wife, Jenny. He watched his brother run across the Chicago River over the Franklin Street Bridge at the race’s halfway mark. Will was running fast — on pace to finish the 26.2 miles in just over three hours.
Sean told Jenny to get the camera ready. He contorted his lips to force out a screeching whistle — the same high-pitched mouth siren their grandfather used to get their attention as boys.
Will heard it, smiled and pointed at them as he ran past.
Jenny snapped a portrait of Will, his last.
Fire Capt. William Lee Caviness, 35, of the Greensboro, N.C., Fire Department collapsed and died a few hundred feet from the finish line where his wife and brother waited to celebrate with him.
When Sean and Jenny got word that Will was taken to Mercy Hospital they rushed there in a cab.
Chicago Fire Commissioner Robert Hoff hurried there, too.
Jenny stood by her husband, lying lifeless on a steel table. Doctors got Will’s heart to beat a few times, but it only lasted a moment.
“They continued to work on him even though they knew there was nothing left because I asked them to,” Jenny said. “I’ve never seen an ER doctor cry. Everyone in the emergency room cried. I know they did everything they could.”
Will was gone. Sean and Jenny crumbled.
Hoff comforted them like a brother — his duty in the sacred bond of firefighters.
“It was terrible. Worst day of my life,” Greensboro Fire Capt. Sean Caviness said of the day his brother died. “But the compassion of the brotherhood of the Chicago Fire Department is something that I’ll be forever grateful [for]. I didn’t know anybody in Chicago and they took care of us like we were home. It was an eye-opening experience of brotherhood.”
‘Ready to run’
About 21 miles into the Outer Banks Marathon in North Carolina in November 2010, the guy running in front of Will froze. Will couldn’t stop and plowed into the guy. But Will got up and kept running. His hamstrings tightened, slowing his pace. His time, 3:17:26, was 40 seconds shy of qualifying for the Boston Marathon, Will’s ultimate goal.
Will’s brother, Sean, had already booked hotel rooms in Boston and scored Red Sox tickets for marathon weekend. If they were going to Boston, Will had to run the Chicago Marathon.
But he couldn’t just do it for himself. He picked a charity close to his heart — the International Association of Fire Fighters Burn Foundation — and rounded up more than $2,500 in donations.
Will, Jenny and Sean arrived two days early. Will rented them a Gold Coast brownstone near Rush Street so they could have a “real Chicago experience.” They shared a deep dish at Lou Malnatti’s and walked it off in the boozey district with the funny nickname — the Viagra Triangle. Just saying it out loud made them laugh.
On Saturday, Jenny made the boys take her shopping on Michigan Avenue. Later, over giant bowls of pasta at the Chicago Firehouse Restaurant, they mingled with other firefighters running to raise cash for the burn foundation. They met Tom Flamm, a retired firefighter and liaison to out-of-town firefighters.
“Hey Yankee,” Flamm remembers Will saying in slow southern drawl. “Ya’ll wanna sidown wid us.”
Flamm wanted to talk NASCAR. Will never watched NASCAR in his life. They got to know each other a bit, anyway.
“Will loved Chicago. He liked how friendly the people are,” Sean said. “He said if he had to move to a big city, a really big city, this is where he’d move.”
Early Sunday morning, Will, Jenny and Sean were the first to arrive at Engine 13 near Millennium Park for a pre-race breakfast of oatmeal, yogurt and bananas. The marathoners raising cash for the burn foundation posed for a picture before heading off to the starting line.
“This guy was ready to run,” Flamm said. “He was chomping at the bit and ready to go.”
‘You’re one of us’
A former college football kicker, Will stood 6-feet tall. He was 175 pounds and in perfect health.
No one is sure what caused his sudden death. Later, autopsy results came back inconclusive.
When the ER doctors wept over Will’s body, Jenny was destroyed. She’d loved Will for so long.
She was a freshman at Grimsley High School when Will, a sophomore football player, asked her out on a date. Jenny turned him down. But Will was always around. They had all the same friends and went to the same parties.
Will didn’t convince Jenny to go on their first official date until their last year of college. On Dec. 26, 1998, they had dinner alone at Richies, a fancy downtown tavern with darn good food.
Two weeks later, Will popped the question. Jenny said, ‘Yes.” They got married on June 3, 2000.
“My husband knew what he wanted and didn’t mess around,” Jenny said. “I was just lucky he wanted me.”
Will and Jenny settled in their hometown. They had two children — Jack, 4, and Caroline, who was born on the day her father was promoted to fire captain, Dec. 1, 2010.
In the trauma room, all Jenny could think about were the kids. She needed to be with them. Now.
Sean was frozen. His brother was his pal. They both were fire captains. They lived on the same block — just five doors down. Their children played together after school. Now, Will was gone and Sean didn’t know what to do next.
Hoff did.
“You step up to the plate. That’s what you do,” Hoff said. “ You do everything you can for this family. Will was one of us.”
‘Maybe there’s hope for my kids”
Hoff ordered fire trucks to the hospital to stand as an honor guard while Will’s body was taken in a fire department ambulance to the Cook County morgue.
Hoff took Jenny and Sean back to the brownstone and helped pack their suitcases. Hoff didn’t know anything about the Caviness family, but he suddenly felt a special connection to them, especially Will and Jenny’s children, whom he had never met.
“I told them that I’ve lived through this personally,” Hoff said. “My father died when I was five.”
Chicago Fire Chief Thomas Hoff died on Valentines Day 1962. A building collapsed on him.
“The loss of a father tugs on my heat strings,” Hoff said. “My dad was my idol. I didn’t see him much, he worked a lot. But I knew what he did.”
Hoff pulled some strings to get Jenny and Sean on the next flight to North Carolina.
On the drive to the airport, Hoff told Jenny that her kids would remember Will the way he remembers his father — as a good person who helped others.
“If this man is this wonderful,” Jenny thought to herself, “maybe there’s hope for my kids.”
O’Hare District Chief Tim Sampey came in on his day off to escort Jenny and Sean through security.
“He didn’t just walk us to the gate,” Sean said. “He went on the plane with us and said, ‘Here are your seats.’ He said, “You’re one of us.” It was unreal.”
Jenny still gets overwhelmed talking about the day her husband died in Chicago.
“They wrapped their arms around us like we were part of the family,” Jenny said, stopping herself from crying while feeding her children supper. “You can’t buy that. I don’t know how I got home. All I know is they put me on that plane. I’m very lucky. I’m in awe of Chicago.”
Chicago’s final salute
Two firefighters from Greensboro, Will’s best friend Brad Shumate and Justin Price, were dispatched to escort Will’s body back home.
Flamm greeted them at the O’Hare firehouse, where the guys from Rescue 3 made breakfast.
Later, a hearse carrying Will’s body made a slow procession to O’Hare — where a private jet donated by a North Carolina company would take Will’s body home — slowing outside firehouses on the route while firefighters saluted their fallen brother.
At O’Hare, folks gathered around the casket and someone said a few words. And because paying respects wasn’t nearly enough, the Chicago Firefighters Union Burn Foundation sent a gift — $5,000 for Jenny and the kids.
Flamm stood at attention as the jet taxied under a graceful arc shot from a water cannon — Chicago’s final salute — before take off.
“That was pretty tough on me,” said Flamm, who had recently returned from the Fallen Firefighter Memorial in Colorado Springs, Colo., where the name of his former fire academy candidate Ed Stringer was added to a too long list of firefighters killed in the line of duty.
Stringer died Dec. 22, 2010 when the roof of an abandoned South Side building collapsed during a fire. “I said the eulogy at Ed Stringer’s mass,” Flamm said. “I was still kind of dealing with that ... and to have this happen to Will was really, really tough.”
‘Tell them I’m grateful’
Will Caviness ran.
He ran to work in the morning. He ran home at night.
He ran pushing his baby daughter in a stroller — 15 miles at a time.
He ran in the sweltering summer heat — 95 degrees and humid.
And he could fly — six and a half minutes a mile.
“I would see him running all over,” Will’s older brother Sean Caviness said. “I’d be driving 10 miles from home, and I’d see him running on a side street. He ran everywhere.”
He ran the Chicago marathon on Oct. 9.
Sean was there with Will’s wife, Jenny. He watched his brother run across the Chicago River over the Franklin Street Bridge at the race’s halfway mark. Will was running fast — on pace to finish the 26.2 miles in just over three hours.
Sean told Jenny to get the camera ready. He contorted his lips to force out a screeching whistle — the same high-pitched mouth siren their grandfather used to get their attention as boys.
Will heard it, smiled and pointed at them as he ran past.
Jenny snapped a portrait of Will, his last.
Fire Capt. William Lee Caviness, 35, of the Greensboro, N.C., Fire Department collapsed and died a few hundred feet from the finish line where his wife and brother waited to celebrate with him.
When Sean and Jenny got word that Will was taken to Mercy Hospital they rushed there in a cab.
Chicago Fire Commissioner Robert Hoff hurried there, too.
Jenny stood by her husband, lying lifeless on a steel table. Doctors got Will’s heart to beat a few times, but it only lasted a moment.
“They continued to work on him even though they knew there was nothing left because I asked them to,” Jenny said. “I’ve never seen an ER doctor cry. Everyone in the emergency room cried. I know they did everything they could.”
Will was gone. Sean and Jenny crumbled.
Hoff comforted them like a brother — his duty in the sacred bond of firefighters.
“It was terrible. Worst day of my life,” Greensboro Fire Capt. Sean Caviness said of the day his brother died. “But the compassion of the brotherhood of the Chicago Fire Department is something that I’ll be forever grateful [for]. I didn’t know anybody in Chicago and they took care of us like we were home. It was an eye-opening experience of brotherhood.”
‘Ready to run’
About 21 miles into the Outer Banks Marathon in North Carolina in November 2010, the guy running in front of Will froze. Will couldn’t stop and plowed into the guy. But Will got up and kept running. His hamstrings tightened, slowing his pace. His time, 3:17:26, was 40 seconds shy of qualifying for the Boston Marathon, Will’s ultimate goal.
Will’s brother, Sean, had already booked hotel rooms in Boston and scored Red Sox tickets for marathon weekend. If they were going to Boston, Will had to run the Chicago Marathon.
But he couldn’t just do it for himself. He picked a charity close to his heart — the International Association of Fire Fighters Burn Foundation — and rounded up more than $2,500 in donations.
Will, Jenny and Sean arrived two days early. Will rented them a Gold Coast brownstone near Rush Street so they could have a “real Chicago experience.” They shared a deep dish at Lou Malnatti’s and walked it off in the boozey district with the funny nickname — the Viagra Triangle. Just saying it out loud made them laugh.
On Saturday, Jenny made the boys take her shopping on Michigan Avenue. Later, over giant bowls of pasta at the Chicago Firehouse Restaurant, they mingled with other firefighters running to raise cash for the burn foundation. They met Tom Flamm, a retired firefighter and liaison to out-of-town firefighters.
“Hey Yankee,” Flamm remembers Will saying in slow southern drawl. “Ya’ll wanna sidown wid us.”
Flamm wanted to talk NASCAR. Will never watched NASCAR in his life. They got to know each other a bit, anyway.
“Will loved Chicago. He liked how friendly the people are,” Sean said. “He said if he had to move to a big city, a really big city, this is where he’d move.”
Early Sunday morning, Will, Jenny and Sean were the first to arrive at Engine 13 near Millennium Park for a pre-race breakfast of oatmeal, yogurt and bananas. The marathoners raising cash for the burn foundation posed for a picture before heading off to the starting line.
“This guy was ready to run,” Flamm said. “He was chomping at the bit and ready to go.”
‘You’re one of us’
A former college football kicker, Will stood 6-feet tall. He was 175 pounds and in perfect health.
No one is sure what caused his sudden death. Later, autopsy results came back inconclusive.
When the ER doctors wept over Will’s body, Jenny was destroyed. She’d loved Will for so long.
She was a freshman at Grimsley High School when Will, a sophomore football player, asked her out on a date. Jenny turned him down. But Will was always around. They had all the same friends and went to the same parties.
Will didn’t convince Jenny to go on their first official date until their last year of college. On Dec. 26, 1998, they had dinner alone at Richies, a fancy downtown tavern with darn good food.
Two weeks later, Will popped the question. Jenny said, ‘Yes.” They got married on June 3, 2000.
“My husband knew what he wanted and didn’t mess around,” Jenny said. “I was just lucky he wanted me.”
Will and Jenny settled in their hometown. They had two children — Jack, 4, and Caroline, who was born on the day her father was promoted to fire captain, Dec. 1, 2010.
In the trauma room, all Jenny could think about were the kids. She needed to be with them. Now.
Sean was frozen. His brother was his pal. They both were fire captains. They lived on the same block — just five doors down. Their children played together after school. Now, Will was gone and Sean didn’t know what to do next.
Hoff did.
“You step up to the plate. That’s what you do,” Hoff said. “ You do everything you can for this family. Will was one of us.”
‘Maybe there’s hope for my kids”
Hoff ordered fire trucks to the hospital to stand as an honor guard while Will’s body was taken in a fire department ambulance to the Cook County morgue.
Hoff took Jenny and Sean back to the brownstone and helped pack their suitcases. Hoff didn’t know anything about the Caviness family, but he suddenly felt a special connection to them, especially Will and Jenny’s children, whom he had never met.
“I told them that I’ve lived through this personally,” Hoff said. “My father died when I was five.”
Chicago Fire Chief Thomas Hoff died on Valentines Day 1962. A building collapsed on him.
“The loss of a father tugs on my heat strings,” Hoff said. “My dad was my idol. I didn’t see him much, he worked a lot. But I knew what he did.”
Hoff pulled some strings to get Jenny and Sean on the next flight to North Carolina.
On the drive to the airport, Hoff told Jenny that her kids would remember Will the way he remembers his father — as a good person who helped others.
“If this man is this wonderful,” Jenny thought to herself, “maybe there’s hope for my kids.”
O’Hare District Chief Tim Sampey came in on his day off to escort Jenny and Sean through security.
“He didn’t just walk us to the gate,” Sean said. “He went on the plane with us and said, ‘Here are your seats.’ He said, “You’re one of us.” It was unreal.”
Jenny still gets overwhelmed talking about the day her husband died in Chicago.
“They wrapped their arms around us like we were part of the family,” Jenny said, stopping herself from crying while feeding her children supper. “You can’t buy that. I don’t know how I got home. All I know is they put me on that plane. I’m very lucky. I’m in awe of Chicago.”
Chicago’s final salute
Two firefighters from Greensboro, Will’s best friend Brad Shumate and Justin Price, were dispatched to escort Will’s body back home.
Flamm greeted them at the O’Hare firehouse, where the guys from Rescue 3 made breakfast.
Later, a hearse carrying Will’s body made a slow procession to O’Hare — where a private jet donated by a North Carolina company would take Will’s body home — slowing outside firehouses on the route while firefighters saluted their fallen brother.
At O’Hare, folks gathered around the casket and someone said a few words. And because paying respects wasn’t nearly enough, the Chicago Firefighters Union Burn Foundation sent a gift — $5,000 for Jenny and the kids.
Flamm stood at attention as the jet taxied under a graceful arc shot from a water cannon — Chicago’s final salute — before take off.
“That was pretty tough on me,” said Flamm, who had recently returned from the Fallen Firefighter Memorial in Colorado Springs, Colo., where the name of his former fire academy candidate Ed Stringer was added to a too long list of firefighters killed in the line of duty.
Stringer died Dec. 22, 2010 when the roof of an abandoned South Side building collapsed during a fire. “I said the eulogy at Ed Stringer’s mass,” Flamm said. “I was still kind of dealing with that ... and to have this happen to Will was really, really tough.”
‘Tell them I’m grateful’