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Wheatley comes home
Submitted by Michael Fielding on Mon, 08/30/2010 - 11:46am.
There were children sitting on the curb and neighbors waving flags. There were fire trucks and squad cars with their lights on.
But no one was throwing candy. There were no floats, and unlike a parade, there was silence.
It was a funeral procession for Christopher Wheatley, who called the neighborhood home. On this hot, muggy Friday afternoon, hundreds of his friends and fellow pubic safety personnel honored him in the procession that from St. John Fisher Church.
Wheatley was killed Monday in a grease fire at a Loop restaurant. Assigned to the South Loop’s Engine 5 firehouse, the 31-year-old fell 35 feet to his death while carrying 75 pounds of equipment.
There’s something about a parade that brings people together - in this case the parade wasn't celebrating the South Side Irish or Memorial Day but the life of a man who joined the Chicago Fire Department as a paramedic 10 years ago ... and in a neighborhood that is home to thousands of Chicago’s public safety personnel, that's the best parade anybody could ask for.
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