R.I.P. Firefighter / Dispatcher Mitch Fiandt, a friend

A week ago I wrote here that Mitch Fiandt was fighting cancer, and now he's gone.

Just like that.

That's Mitch on the left, still in his dispatch uniform pants. Yeah, that's me on the right. We were so young.

I've had so many friends fight and beat cancer, at least for awhile, that it never occurred to me he wouldn't. But Mitch died just short of fifty years as a volunteer firefighter, having started at Orange Township Fire before he was even eighteen, back in the days when you could do that kind of thing. Cancer takes a lot of firefighters, especially the ones were around in the days when breathing protection was a mild suggestion. He told me once he breathed in some particularly bad stuff off the hot side of a burning house, back before he moved to Albion and joined our Department.

That old lung damage was one reason why he usually drove the fire trucks and ran the pump, rather than going inside--not that I didn't see him go in, more than once. And yet, when we had our annual lung capacity test, he always passed and usually ran circles around the rest of us.

There's not much I can say that isn't in his obituary, here:

https://www.harperfuneralhomes.com/obituary/Mitch-Fiandt?fbclid

If memory serves, in addition to being the Albion Fire Department Chief Engineer--a kind of honorary title acknowledging the fact that if we needed an apparatus operator, he was there--he also served as Secretary and Treasurer on the AFD.

He was also my boss for several years in Noble County Communications, or the 911 Center, or Dispatch, or whatever people will call it next year. He was there for 35 years, which did not bode well for his sanity, and was 911 Director from 1999 until he retired in 2015.

Here Mitch and John Urso, also a combo firefighter/dispatch, present me my 25 year dispatcher award, along with a certificate for a free psychotherapy session.

Mitch and I both served at various times on the Albion Town Council and the Albion Plan Commission, and he was in about a hundred other things as well, being the type who was always helping out. Even with my writing gig, he stayed busier than me. He was the first to tell me I should write a book about dispatching, which I will, as soon as the statue of limitations runs out.

The last time I saw him was at my grandmother's funeral: He had a part time gig with Harper's Funeral Home here in Albion. I don't believe he ever had a job or hobby that wasn't, in one way or another, about helping people.

And if that it's the best thing you can say about a person, I don't know what is.