I had the pleasure and honor to MC the Varna Volunteer Fire Company's (VVFC) January 2009 banquet. I spoke briefly on the meaning of "community".

Welcome, everyone, to the Varna Voluntee Fire Company's annual banquet. Everyone warm enough?!

I am Oliver Habicht, a past VVFC active member and former Board member and Chair for many years. I was honored with Life membership and currently serve as a Support member. We'll start with "Safety First"! [point out exits]

We thank you for coming to celebrate our year's activities and to help launch us into our new year!

We also convey our thanks and appreciation to Cayuga Heights, Ithaca, Dryden, Brooktondale, Slaterville, Etna, and other companies covering for us so we may enjoy this evening together.

Tonight, after dinner, we will be formally welcoming our guests, and then we'll start in with our annual awards and recognitions.

Right now, before we share grace, I would like to share with you a few thoughts as a past active member on the topic of community. Broadly speaking, when we think of community, we often think about neighbors helping neighbors. A community has people with whom you share something in common, fostering a sense of belonging. People with whom you share a sense of purpose, in which you can see yourself going somewhere together. Hopefully this sounds familiar! Our towns, villages, and neighborhoods are obviously what most folks think of a communities. Among other support, they provide funds, though taxes and personal and business contributions, which help us in our mission as part of the emergency response infrastructure, to help in times of need.

A special tip of the hat to our guests who are community leaders in the Town of Dryden and elsewhere.

Each of our families are also important communities. The support from our families is important to many of us as we serve the VVFC community.

A special thanks to the supporting family members here tonight.

My daughter, Cady, is in 2nd grade- she's 7 years old, and her class is currently studying "communities". [Show work book] Not surprisingly, under the Safety section ("People need to be safe"), they show a firefighter. Iconic image, isn't it?

I am proud to have been invited to serve as MC tonight as part of this very special community, and the many communities that support us. To give context to the specific community of active or aspiring firefighters, fire police, and emergency medical providers within the Varna Volunteer Fire Company, we recognize that the general community of volunteer emergency responders is broad and deep. In the U.S., it stretches in time from when George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were volunteer firefighters before they were founding fathers. What percentage of figherfighters are volunteers? Answer: 74%, almost 800,000 Americans. Volunteers protect nearly 80% of the U.S. land mass. And of the greater than 26,000 fire departments in the U.S., 87% are all or mostly volunteer. And, last number!, 94% of fire departments have some level of out-of-hospital EMS. That's a lot of volunteers serving their communities. But greater than half of the approximately 100 U.S. firefighters who die annually in the line of duty, are volunteers. Thus, the lives we serve to protect must by necessity includ our own. It is within this community, your community, that we each have a responsibility- yes, an obligation, to keep ourselves safe and our company thriving.

With these thoughts in mind, I thus propose four toasts tonight.

Let us toast to our successes in fulfilling those unique responsibilities to ourseleves and to each other. Here, here!

A toast to those who support us emotionally and financially. Here, here!

A toast to our own VVFC, and as importantly to the broader fire and EMS community that we are  a part of. Here, here!

And a final toast to us and our passion: Neighbors helping neighbors.

Thank you.