Hundreds of firefighters packed into a Beatrice church to pay tribute to Jeremy Wach.
CARA PESEK / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Thursday, November 8, 2007 6:00 pm
BEATRICE — The firetrucks and rescue units came from Wood River, Auburn, North Bend, Firth, Fairbury, Hickman, Marysville, Kan., and dozens of other communities.
Hundreds of firefighters packed into Christ Community Church in Beatrice to honor Jeremy Wach, a Wymore volunteer firefighter who died battling a house fire in Wymore early Monday morning when part of the roof collapsed on him. He was 31.
Along with Wach’s family and friends, the firefighters filled the entire church, an overflow room and a green space across the street from the church.
Many cried as they listened to Pastor Trent Baker describe Wach, whom he met when Wach was a teenager.
Wach was warm and goofy and generous, Baker said.
In the years afterward, Baker would learn that Wach was the type of grandson who would buy a lift chair for his grandmother, to help her get around more easily.
He was the type of father to spend an afternoon making cookies with his young son.
He was the type of friend who was always offering to help with this or that, Baker said.
“He helped me move my piano three different times,” Baker said. “Who does that?”
The same kind of person, he said, who joins a volunteer fire department.
Wach was also a Gage County sheriff’s deputy. He had worked with the department since 2003 and served as its jail administrator.
Police departments and sheriff’s offices from across the state also showed up to pay their respects.
Officers from the Laramie Police Department in Wyoming came to Beatrice.
Members of the Estes Park, Colo., fire department came, too.
It was important to come all that way, Jeff Barker said. It’s a way to show support. It’s what firefighters do, he said.
But in the case of the Estes Park Department, it was about more than that, he said.
Wach lived in Estes Park for a short time when he was growing up, said Barker, who was also his cousin.
“Jeremy gave as a child as much as he gave as an adult,” Barker said.
Slides projected during the service showed Wach as a fat, happy baby, as a little boy hugging Minnie Mouse and as an adult, on his hands and knees, barking at a tiny dog.
Family photos showed Wach with his two young sons, Joseph and Matthew, with his wife, Melissa, and with his co-workers at the Gage County Sheriff’s Office.
After the church service, Wach’s co-workers, his fellow firefighters and hundreds of firefighters and law enforcement officers stood at attention as Wach’s body was moved from the church to a Wymore fire truck, which served as a caisson to carry the casket to Wymore.
The mourners stood at attention as a dispatcher signed Wach off duty for the last time. Four times in succession, a bell was struck five times. The “four fives,” as the ritual is called, was the signal used in the 19th century to indicate that a firefighter had died in the line of duty.
Now it’s tradition.
The firing squad fired their guns, and taps was played.
Then, slowly, with Wymore’s trucks leading the way, a procession of more than 100 vehicles from fire, rescue, police and sheriff’s departments drove past the Gage County’s Sheriff’s Office, around the Gage County Courthouse and down U.S. 77 to Wymore.
They came all that way, Barker said, because Wach was a hero.
But he wasn’t just a hero because he died fighting a fire, he said.
Wach didn’t realize it, but all of his life he was a hero, Barker said just before joining the procession.
Reach Cara Pesek at 473-7361 or cpesek@journalstar.com.