Piedmont says thank you

Continuing a yearly tradition of honoring first responders on the 9/11 anniversary, staff with Piedmont Natural Gas visited the Clinton Fire Department to gift them a grill.

The donation, a Blackstone grill, was made at the fire headquarters on Wall Street this past Wednesday. It took a moment to construct the grill before it was carried into a fire department filled with grinning firefighters.

Part of an annual giveaway that Piedmont does to honor first responders for all they do, the gift pays special homage to the sacrifices made by those who serve, specifically those who died on 9/11. As such, Piedmont selects a different department ever year to highlight for the occasion. This year CFD was the recipient.

“We’ve done everything from gift cards and beyond, but here lately, the past couple years, we’ve been giving a Blackstone,” noted Dean McLamb, of Piedmont. “So, we hope that you take this and cook many meals on it. We appreciate everything you do, the sacrifices you all make, we just can’t thank you enough.

“Every year for 9/11, we choose a fire department, EMS, or law enforcement department to honor, and so this year you (CFD) were picked. So again, like I said, we appreciate everything you do and for your sacrifices …we hope you enjoy it.”

McLamb also said if those in the Clinton Fire Department ever needed assistance hooking their new grill up to their natural gas line, they’d be happy to come back anytime to help out.

“I imagine some of you are familiar with Blackstone’s and know you’ve gotta season it up and all that good stuff,” he said with a smile. “Going forward, any time you want to have liaisons with us, please reach out. We’ll be glad to come back, and if you ever want the grill on natural gas, let us know and we can work out something like we did last year at the Irwin Fire Department. We actually ran the gas lines for them and converted it to natural and everything.

“Again, just let us know anytime and as I’ve said many times already, we appreciate everything you all do — enjoy the grill.”

Clinton’s Fire Department was chosen, Piedmont’s Morgan Hill said, because the company really wanted to donate to a group they’ve worked closely with recently.

“We just recently did some liaison with them (CFD), so we tried to choose somebody we had recently done a liaison meeting with,” Hill explained. “We did (the meeting) with all the shifts here and we ended up choosing them to do this for so we can keep building a good relationship with the fire department.

“We’ve been doing this for quite a few years; I don’t know the exact amount of years, but we’ve been doing it the last several. It’s always been about saying thank you to our first responders and making sure they’re remembered, especially on 9/11.”

Of all the smiling faces at the gifting, none were bigger than Clinton Fire Chief Hagan Thornton’s.

“We work hand-in-hand with Piedmont every day, and we have been a lot more lately with the gas leak that happened at the hospital,” he said. “Even before that, Piedmont came in a couple months ago and they taught a class through all the shifts on natural gas stuff. They also talked to us about the new pipeline that ran through, and one of the guys that taught the class, he came by and said I would like to donate a grill as a thank you on 9/11.”

Thornton said he was beyond appreciative for getting the grill, but getting it on 9/11 as a member of the fire department made it much more special.

“Everybody in the fire service, EMS, PD and law enforcement side, all of us remember 9/11, and that’s something that you’re proud of when you do this type of work,” he said. “Those people, they did a lot on 9/11 — the amount of people they helped that day, we‘ll keep remembering it every day, every year, and so it’s kind of special to have this donated to us on 9/11.

”Luckily, we got chosen this year. I have never had anything really like this happen since I’ve been here so it means a lot to me, to us — we’re happy and truly appreciate it.”