You never forget your first major fire run.
For Kendallville Firefighter Eric Kennedy, that’s probably truer than for most, as his first run was to the June 4, 2018, McCray Refrigerator complex.
Things can only get easier for the rest of his career, he joked. Kennedy had served as a volunteer firefighter for about a decade, but had just been hired on full-time at the Kendallville Fire Department on April 16. He “went to shift” for the first time about three weeks earlier.
Then, about 2:30 a.m. on June 4, he was startled out of sleep at the fire house on Drake Road.
“First time I had ever been woke up in the middle of the night,” he said. “It jarred me awake pretty heavy.”