Riding cross-country for ‘extended family'

What started out as a talk with family members — a family of firefighters that is — has become a nearly 2,600 mile coast-to-coast trip for two bicyclists from Georgia seeking support for nine lost members of that family.

"It really is like an extended family,” Laddie Williams said about being a firefighter. "To lose nine members of your family is a tough thing to go through.”

Williams, 35, a firefighter and emergency medical technician with the Augusta, Ga., fire department, and his riding partner, Scott Rousseau, 32, a bicycle mechanic and a friend of Williams', stopped Monday in Oklahoma City as part of a traveling effort to raise money for the family members of nine Charleston, S.C., firefighters who died June 18.

More than a dozen firefighters rushed into a burning furniture store that day to save employees of the business they thought were trapped inside, but found no one. Nine of those men were killed when the building collapsed onto them.

Other than the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, it was the single most fatal incident for firefighters since 11 were lost in a propane tank explosion in 1973, Williams said.

Firefighters across the nation felt like they lost a member of their family after learning of the June 18 accident, Williams told The Oklahoman in a phone interview from Oklahoma City's fire Station 1 on Monday. He said that feeling reached him and his crew with the Augusta Fire Department and led to Ride for the Charleston 9.

The bicyclists began Sept. 11 in Palm Springs, Calif., and have ridden about 1,200 miles, mostly over old Route 66, with stops in nearly every town to ask for donations from local residents and firefighters.

"This ride really emphasizes the family aspect of our profession,” Williams said. "That (accident) is something that could happen to any one of us any day and so you have to respect the danger.”

The two men have averaged about 120 miles a day — each riding half a day while the other drives a van full of gear — and have collected between $6,000 and $7,000 in donations. They hope to raise a lot more before reaching Charleston on Oct. 13, but they have not set a goal, Williams said.

Before leaving Augusta, the men raised a few thousand dollars to cover fuel costs and lunches. Dinner and lodging has been taken care of every night by local firefighters along the way, Williams said.

The men spent Monday night with Oklahoma City firefighters at Station 1. Tuesday, the men took a day off, meeting with people around town and other firefighters, and visited the Oklahoma City National Memorial.

They return to the road this morning to head toward Little Rock, Ark.

Williams said he and Rousseau had to make some sacrifices to make the trip.

"I found out the second day out here that my wife is pregnant with our first child,” Williams said, "so we've definitely had to make some sacrifices to do this.”

And Rousseau, who hadn't planned to make the trip, agreed to substitute for another Augusta firefighter who broke his leg in a bike race two weeks from the trip's scheduled start. But Williams says there is a bright side to the switch, since Rousseau happens to be a bike mechanic.

"We have all our bases covered,” he said.