GW, thank you for your service.
During my working years, I was a licensed CPA with bank auditing, accounting and taxation my specialty, so although CT is a small state, during the day I was often quite far away from home and unable to respond in a timely fashion to any emergencies which any of my family members might find themselves in. And so I had to count on the volunteer firefighters and EMS personnel, as well as the full-time members of our police force, to watch after my family, and the house we called home, when I was away. Needless to say, I always responded generously when I would receive the annual request for funds to cover expenses not covered in the Town's Annual Budget; the Town's practice was to fully cover the firefighters' and EMS' regular annual operating expenses, but to look to the Town's citizenry to form ad hoc committees to conduct campaigns to raise funds for nonrecurring or irregular capital expenses, such as new Beretta sidearms and bullet-proof vests for our police, new oxygen equipment for our smoke eaters, and a new EMS vehicle for our volunteer medics. Some things have no price, a man's family has no objective value, and a "thank you" and a handshake was the simple and sincere expression of gratitude to the volunteer public servants when they responded to a man's family's call for help. God bless you and your fellow volunteer public servants for the many hours that all of you have, and will, devote to your fellow townspeople.