Public Servant Spotlight — Anna Harmon: ‘I grew up in fire and rescue’

Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2015 at 8:59 am

By Sarah Vogelsong

CP Reporter

 

When Anna Harmon refers to her fellow first responders at Ladysmith Rescue as “family,” she’s being literal. After all, when she goes down to the station, she’s got a good chance of encountering either her mother, who joined the squad in 1992, or her husband, who joined up about six years ago.

Nor does the family tree stop there. The Ladysmith native was preceded in fire-rescue work by her father Emmett C. Farmer, a 30-year veteran of Ladysmith Rescue and a life member of Ladysmith Fire, and her grandfather Emmett R. Farmer, a life member of Port Royal Fire. As a “third-generation” volunteer, one of Harmon’s dearest wishes is that her son, now 5, become the next chain in the long link of family efforts to help fellow citizens on the toughest days of their lives.

“I grew up in fire and rescue,” Harmon said. She still fondly remembers her father going out on calls when she was a child, and then returning, covered with dirt and smelling of smoke.

Except for four years of study at Radford University in southwestern Virginia and a stint after graduation in Hopewell, where she volunteered with Hopewell Emergency (a job she kept up for 10 years) and the Burrowsville and Chesterfield fire departments, Harmon has spent all of her life in Caroline.

“I grew up four miles from here,” she said, speaking at the Ladysmith Rescue building on Route 1, “and I live five miles from here now.”

She first got involved in rescue work while in high school, in 1988, when she began volunteering at the Ladysmith station. Back then, squad rules didn’t allow men and women to sleep overnight in the station at the same time, so certain shifts were assigned to an all-female crew.

One of those shifts, which Harmon often took, stretched from Saturday morning to Sunday evening, and she still fondly remembers many of the women with whom she served. Some, like Macine Williams, have seen Harmon grow up in rescue work.

“The older members were very protective of me,” said Harmon. “They showed me the ropes.”

But nothing could shield Harmon from certain tough aspects of the job. Her first call was a motorcycle fatality in the Ladysmith area, in which the driver missed a curve and went off the shoulder.

From the beginning, though, Harmon demonstrated the ability to keep cool in difficult and sometimes heart-wrenching situations.

“You need to be able to build a wall,” she said. But knowledge isn’t enough; you have to have judgment as well: “You need to know when to build that wall and when to break it down.”

Although she has also trained as a firefighter and served with Ladysmith Fire, the empathetic aspect of rescue work has always appealed to Harmon, particularly the one-on-one time that she gets to spend with patients.

“I’m a talker,” she said. “I’ll talk your ear off on the back of an ambulance.”

That sense of empathy has developed over the years, due in part to a difficult turn of events in Harmon’s own life: in 2006, she was diagnosed with cancer, starting a battle she is still fighting. Although she’s “never been in remission,” she and her husband gave birth to a son in 2009, and even during her treatment and pregnancy, Harmon rarely slowed down.

“(My son) was in utero, and he was going on calls,” she said.

Her experiences with cancer, Harmon said, have given her a greater depth of understanding when working with sick or injured patients in emergency situations, and have allowed her to relate on a more personal basis to them.

Ladysmith Rescue, in fact, has been an irreplaceable portion of her life since her diagnosis.

“This is my outlet to do something,” she said. “When I’m down here, I’m not sick. Other people are sick. … I don’t know what I would do without it.”

And although Harmon has worked a variety of jobs over the years, from 911 dispatcher in Hopewell and Hanover and Caroline counties to emergency management planner in Prince William County, she keeps coming back to fire and rescue.

Today, she’s a first lieutenant in charge of membership, has served as a captain with the squad, and about three years ago was certified as an EMS education coordinator.

“It gets in you,” she said. “It’s a part of you. … There’s no way to change that or to separate it.”

Safety Tip

Harmon recommends that residents make sure that their address is visible from both sides of their mailbox, since emergency vehicles may be coming from either direction. Additionally, if houses are located at the end of a long driveway with a series of mailboxes clumped by the main road, residents should be sure to clearly mark their house number so that responders can distinguish the residences from each other.

“Keep it up to date, and keep it visible,” Harmon said. “We can’t help you if we can’t find you.”

 

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