By Leslie Bridgers
Morning Sentinel
WATERVILLE — Geared up in helmets and boots donated from local fire departments, a dozen students stood with their right arms in a flexed position, carrying imaginary ladders.
“Prepare to move forward, and move!” they yelled and marched around the side of the building.
Twenty-nine area high school students spend 2 1/2 hours every weekday training to be firefighters and emergency medical technicians at Mid-Maine Technical Center in Waterville. During the past few months, they’ve also dedicated a lot of after-school time to furthering their education — by fundraising.
Through dinners, raffles, car washes and bake sales, the students have raised more than $5,000 toward a trip to the site where the World Trade Center once stood. In the next two months, they’ll need to raise another $3,000 in order to go.
The class visited ground zero for the first time last year. Instructor Josh Wheeler hopes to make it an annual trip. As the years go by, he said, fewer students will remember what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, making the visit even more important for future classes.
“In six years, we’re going to run into kids who didn’t live through it,” Wheeler said. “Hopefully, we can make sure they understand how much of an impact it had on what we do.”
The idea for the trip came from Tom Savinelli, a former career firefighter in Connecticut, who volunteers as an instructor for the school’s emergency services program.
Savinelli, who has friends in the New York City fire department, helped with the clean-up at ground zero a few days after the terrorist attacks.
“There’s nothing. It’s just a giant hole in the city,” said Savinelli, describing the scene. “Guys were down, but they knew their friends were in there, and they were going to find them.”
Visiting last winter — more than eight years later — Wheeler said a heavy feeling still hung over the site.
“There was a palpable weight in the air,” he said.
The students who went on the trip said it made a lasting impression on them.
“It was eye-opening,” said Nicole Welch, a senior from Belgrade. It also marked a significant moment in Welch’s career.
Most of Welch’s male relatives were firefighters, but she didn’t seriously consider the profession until a female friend on the Belgrade Fire Department insisted she give it a try.
Halfway into her first year in the emergency services program, Welch said she still was having second thoughts, but the trip to New York convinced her to stay in the program.
“That was the turning point,” she said.
Now, younger students want their chance to visit the site. Junior Nick Drew said he went to New York City for a school trip in junior high, but didn’t get to take in ground zero like he hoped he would.
“I only got a glimpse of it,” he said. “I’d like to see how they’ve been working on it since then.”
In addition to a tour of ground zero, the trip’s itinerary includes a visit to the fire department in West Haven, Conn., where Savinelli used to work, and tours of New York City’s fire and police museums. The 30 students are scheduled to leave on Feb. 22 and return on Feb. 25. If they can’t raise enough money, Savinelli said, the trip will have to be condensed into three days.
Students will continue to work hard to raise the money they need. For their next fundraiser, they’re taking submarine sandwich orders for the Super Bowl.
There are some more frivolous activities planned for the trip. They’ll eat lunch at Frank Pepe’s famed pizzeria in New Haven, Conn., and spend time in Rockefeller Center. But the students are most excited about talking to veteran firefighters and being at the site of the historic attacks. That fits perfectly with the educational mission of Mid-Maine Tech, said Peter Hallen, the school’s student services coordinator.
“One of the valuable things we can offer is for students to get some real-life experience,” Hallen said. “To walk into Engine 10 and meet firefighters that responded to 9/11, to meet Rescue 1 workers that spent a month at ground zero — I don’t think it gets any more real than that.”
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