Earlier this year, my father, Tony Montemurro, stunned everyone he knew when he announced that he intended to join the local fire company. He’d retired about a year earlier from a successful career as an international operations executive, and was already quite busy with other volunteer activities. And of course spending quality time with his children and grandchildren, and his sailboat and classic cars.

Never one to shy away from a challenge, Tony began the county’s Fire Fighter 1 course in August. After four long, intense months of training and study, he passed all of the written exams and skills tests and graduated from the course.

At age 70, he is the oldest person ever to pass the course. A little birdie clued the local news into this, and they covered his graduation last month. Doylestown Patch also featured him as January’s fire fighter of the month.

My family and I are beyond proud. I’ve always thought he’s amazing and capable of the extraordinary, and of course I wanted to find a way to tell and share his story. I also wanted to find a way to answer the questions “why?” and  “where did this come from?” because Tony had never given any prior indication of an interest in fire fighting.

While I live 300 miles away in Pittsburgh, I put together this short film during our holiday visit to Doylestown.

Many thanks to:
Doylestown Fire Company 79
Bucks County Community College
Steve Downs
Susan Montemurro
Dave Montemurro
Every other Montemurro

Music: “At Launch,” “Movement Proposition,” “The Parting,” “Our Story Begins,” and “Reunited” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons “Attribution 3.0? creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Shot on a Canon 5D Mark II, 50L, 35L, 100L, 70-200L on a Manfrotto monopod and tripod and edited with Adobe Premiere Pro CS6.