New Way to Remember the Fallen

April 2, 2009 – When a fire fighter makes the ultimate sacrifice, fire fighters, family and friends – often by the hundreds – gather to appropriately remember that fire fighters contributions to their lives and the community. From the fire engines that line the streets to the bagpipes, everyone feels a sense of what it is to be a fire fighter and the tight bond that ties fire fighter to fire fighter.

With so much fire fighter tradition involved in the services, some Tulsa, OK Local 176 members felt some elements of services have felt too generic. This sentiment led Tulsa Local 176 fire fighter Corey Parks to a second calling he did not expect – making caskets.

“After a friend of mine died five years ago, the widow expressed to me that she was happy with everything related to the service except the casket,” remembers Parks, an 11-year veteran fire fighter. “She said that she only had plain-looking caskets to choose from and that none of them said anything about who her husband was as a person.” That’s when he got the idea for Hot Rod Caskets.

“In the beginning, the one thing I did know was that I wanted to use treadplate because that is a common material on all fire apparatus,” he says.

After some trial and error, Hot Rod Caskets began distributing to funeral homes in January 2009. The company not only builds fire service-inspired caskets, but caskets for all branches of the military and other professions.

The caskets have been well-received. After Oklahoma City, OK Local 157 fire fighter Charles Dill collapsed and died shortly after responding to a three-alarm apartment fire in early March, the Dill family was impressed by a prototype Hot Rod casket they were shown at a funeral home.

Parks quickly made one specifically for Dill. “I was proud to be able to do something to help the family and to properly remember a fallen brother,” he says.