What does Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet have to do with the fire service, much less firefighter seatbelt use? The play is about tragic love. The tragic part is the decades-old feud between two families that results in the death of the two young lovers.
We think of the fire service as a family of brothers and sisters, a job (paid or volunteer) that we love. Love is a powerful motivation for good or bad. Families have feuds, fog vs smooth, leather vs composite, book vs experience, the list goes on.
For two decades, we have been faced with the seatbelt vs no seatbelt feud from the top of the family hierarchy (IAFC, IAFF, NVFC, etc.) to the firefighter every time they respond. Both sides use love as the rationale for their behavior and the family culture reinforces the decision. When death results, then what? What do we learn about our fire service family? Shakespeare’s play holds up a mirror, allowing us to see the tragedy we impose on those we love.
The prologue to Romeo and Juliet is a sonnet read to the audience before the play begins. I used it as a guide to pay respect, honor, and remember two firefighters who died 20 years apart because of no seatbelt. Brian Hunton, a 27-year-old, Amarillo, Texas, firefighter who fell out of his fire truck in 2005, and Juan Smith, a 26-year-old, firefighter from Rockdale County, Ga., ejected in a rollover crash in June 2026.
We are all players on the stage of life. “To be or not to be, a seatbelt user, that is the question?”
The Tragedy Of Brian and Juan
B. A. Clark
Two firefighters, 20 years apart, both alike in dignity,
Responding on fire trucks, where we lay our scenes,
From ancient fast genes to save others break to foolish risk,
Where LODD blood makes fire service hands unclean.
From forth the fatal lack of seatbelt use, these two brothers
A pair of heroes lose their lives;
Whose misadventures we allow piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their fire departments’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark’d failure to click
And the continuance of this firefighter behavior must rage,
Which, but their lives end, nought could remove,
Is now the bells ring and firefighters respond a seatbelt click
The which if you with ears attend,
What here shall miss, their loss shall strive to mend.
