John Keys is exactly the kind of man you’d be proud to know: kind, dependable, giving and interesting. For 30 of his 32 years as a paramedic for Los Angeles County Fire Department, he’s been the sole department bagpiper. For 17 of those years he’s been a stalwart at Station 69. ‘He’s a legend in the fire service,’ says Ted Acquirro, secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles Firemen’s Relief Association. In the late 1970s, Acquirro was on a committee to improve the Fire Department Memorial. In Joseph Wambaugh’s ‘The Onion Field’ there was a description of a bagpiper playing at the services of a slain police officer: ‘The wail. Clear and piercing. Eerily distant at first. I knew it was coming but still I started trembling when I heard it. Back, back, up on the hillside he was. The solo piper. That solitary piper. Playing that ancient plaintive dirge for clansmen killed in battle.’ Ted thought a bagpiper would add an air of dignity and distinction to the memorial and sent out a plea to the membership for one. If he could find a piper, he would be continuing a 150-year U.S. tradition of pipers playing at funerals that had started with Irish immigrants. When the Irish first came to the United States, they encountered massive discrimination. The only jobs they were allowed to hold were dirty or dangerous as firefighters or policeman. Irish firefighter’s funerals always had a bagpiper as was the custom for Irish funerals. It wasn’t long before that tradition was adopted for non-Irish firefighters as well. Keys was the only person to respond to Acquirro’s search for a piper. He has played at every annual Fire Memorial service since. While the names of all the firefighters who have died from the 1800s to the present are read, John stands on a hill behind the site and plays ‘Amazing Grace’ over and over until all the deceased have been recognized. He admits that where he’s standing, he can’t hear the names, and has to be cued when to stop playing. Shortly after the first memorial service, Keys started playing at individual firemen’s funerals. Acquirro notes that for over 20 years, Keys did it on his own.’He never took a penny or accepted any form of payment. If someone gave him something, he would donate it to the Widows and Orphan’s Fund.’ Acquirro explained that in order to play for funerals Keys would take a day off from work or use his vacation time. About 10 years ago, the department realized all Keys had done and started providing his transportation, as well as covering for him at work. Currently, the department is actively looking for another bagpiper to replace Keys, who is scheduled to retire in three years. Keys started playing the bagpipes when he was 14 or 15. Although bagpipes were a family tradition, trumpet was his first instrument. He played trumpet and tuba in high school and went on to major in music at Cal State L.A. After college he served with the U.S. Naval Reserve and was stationed in Germany where he was with the intelligence security group monitoring the Russian missile system. After his stint in the military, he worked on an ambulance for Los Angeles County for a year, before joining the Los Angeles Fire Department as a single-function paramedic. At the time, people trained solely as paramedics or solely as firefighters. The Department has now shifted so that most of their staff are trained as both. For the next few weeks, when he’s on vacation, he’ll be teaching at the Seamus MacNeill’s California Summer School of Piping in Carlsbad. The school is run through the College of Piping based in Glasgow, Scotland. The camp takes all levels of pipers and they have students from as far away as Japan. Whenever Keys plays, he dresses in the appropriate attire. Scottish shoes, called Gillie Brogues, have top-notched openings with extra long shoe laces that wind around the back of the knee socks and tie, allowing loops to hang in front. Garters, called flashers, have small cloth rectangular pieces and are placed on the socks to hold them up. Knee socks can be different colors. Keys likes to wear his green ones for St. Patrick’s Day, and black for funerals. Since kilts lack pockets, bagpipers keep their wallets in a Sporran, a small purse. Key’s first piping teacher sold him his kilt, a WW II Combat tartan from the Cameron Highlanders of Canada, consisting of eight yards of medium wool. When representing the fire department he wears the regulation black dress shirt, black tie, and badge. The hat, called a Glengary Bonnet, is also black with a fire department badge on it. In England, it’s customary to wear a small wreath around the badge on the hat. John said he couldn’t find one, so he improvised by substituting the wreath displayed above a Cadillac door lock. ‘It’s from PEP Boys.’ One Saint Patrick’s Day, he was playing at Brentwood School, dressed to the hilt, when an emergency signal came from the Mandeville Canyon area. Keys explains, ‘I ran a call in my kilt. The firemen didn’t care, the patient didn’t care, the emergency room technicians didn’t care.’ Living in Oceanside with his wife Maureen and his son Johnny, who’s a sophomore in Rancho Crista High School in Vista, Keys also collects old firefighter memorabilia. He owns a 1924 Seagrave Fire Truck as well as several vintage firemen’s helmets, and a collection of firefighter badges that date back to 1886. He plans to donate them all to the Firefighter’s museum in the’Old Fire Station 27′ in Hollywood. The Fire Department bagpiper has gone to funeral services all over Southern California. He usually plays the escort in with the song ‘Going Home.’ If there’s not a graveside service, he’ll play ‘Amazing Grace’ as the coffin is escorted out. If there’s a graveside service, at the Flag Folding ceremony, he’ll play ‘Fleurs of the Forest,’ a haunting Scottish melody. When asked how he deals with the sadness, his eyes mist and he says, ‘If it gets too emotional I can’t stay in there. I can’t do my job.’ He pauses and then adds, ‘I don’t normally sit in the services.’ Four Corona fire department fighters were killed in a plane crash several years ago, and Keys broke his tradition by staying. He said one of the widows spoke, followed by a tape of the deceased’s four-year-old saying good-bye. ‘It affected me for a long time.’
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