Disabled firefighter took the call

Cincinnati Post

Ben Cunningham has never been one to talk about himself. What his friends and family know about him, they know from the way he carries himself and the choices he makes.

At Anderson Township Fire and Rescue, where Ben attained the rank of lieutenant before applying recently for disability, he's held in the highest regard.

"Ben's like a second father to me," says Lt. Fred Buop.

"When I went to the Air Force in '86, he had a going-away dinner for me, gave me a Bible, shared some words of wisdom. Most people talk; he sets examples.

"It's like, you're almost envious of him. You want other people to think of you the way they think about Ben. You want your family to be like his."

It's not a small family. Ben and Linda brought up three of their own - Michael, 31; Melanie, 28, and Chad, 23 - and adopted two others.

Victoria and Daniel had lived with them as foster children. The only way they could have stayed together as brother and sister was for the Cunninghams to adopt them. So they did.

That ought to tell you something else about Ben - Linda, too, of course, but the story's mainly about Ben. (By the way, Daniel is in Afghanistan at the moment with the 101st Airborne Division.)

Naturally, everyone in the department was saddened to hear Ben had been diagnosed with cancer. It was toward the end of July. The general feeling in the department was, of all the guys this had to happen to . . .

He'd had a chest X-ray in March, and he was clean. This particular cancer is caused by exposure to asbestos. It's called mesothelioma. Ben was a fireman for nearly 30 years, longer than anyone still with the department - no telling how many times he was called to put out fires in buildings festering with asbestos.

A month after the diagnosis, Ben underwent radical surgery to remove his left lung, his diaphragm and part of the sac that surrounds his heart. When he lost his hair because of the chemotherapy and the radiation treatments, probably 40 guys on the department shaved their heads. They wanted to show Ben he wouldn't be going through this thing alone.

Then something happened that reminded everyone who knows Ben why they feel the way they do about him.

It was Dec. 16, around 8:15 p.m. A call came into Anderson Township Station 6. A man on Woodglen Drive was having trouble breathing. Fred Buop was on duty that night. He recognized Woodglen as the street where Ben lived. His first thought was that the call was about Ben.

The call also came over Sean Smith's dispatch pager. Sean's on the department, too, and married to Ben's daughter, Melanie. She recognized the name and called her mom to suggest she walk across the street to see if she could be of any help. Ben decided he'd do the same.

Since the surgery, Ben had been sleeping on their first floor of their home because climbing the stairs was too much for him. But he hustled across the street and up the stairs to the second-floor bathroom, where his neighbor was lying unconscious on the floor.

"Ben told us to go downstairs," Linda said.

"I was afraid he was going to try something, so I asked him please not to."

It took the paramedics four minutes to get there. When Lt. Buop got there, Linda told him Ben was upstairs.

"He was attempting to drag the man out of the bathroom so he could start CPR," the lieutenant said. "Ben was blue, gasping for air."

Assistant Chief Craig Best arrived a short time later. By then, the neighbor had been taken to Mercy Anderson, where he would be pronounced dead. Ben had been breathing pure oxygen long enough that he'd partially recovered. Even then, the chief said, he looked like he'd run a marathon.

It was typical Ben. No one doubts he risked his life trying to save his neighbor. No one would have said anything if he'd backed off when he saw his neighbor lying there.

"But that's not Ben," said Craig Best. "He doesn't think about setting examples. He just does."

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