A little more than a year into working his dream job as a Chicago firefighter, the one he’d spent seven years waiting to be called up for, 30-year-old Mashawn Plummer used his radio to call for help, uttering what’s believed to be the last word he’d ever speak: Mayday.
“He had to know he was in trouble,” his mother, Felicia Townsend, told the Tribune Wednesday morning. “But he wouldn’t change anything. Even though he’s gone, he would not change his life one bit. That’s the peace that we take away from this, that he died doing his heart’s desire.”
Soon after he called for help Thursday, Plummer was pulled from the burning building in the 3100 block of North Marmora Avenue in Belmont Cragin on the Northwest Side. Larry Langford, a spokesman for the Chicago Fire Department, said it will likely be a year before a report is complete regarding what happened that day, but Plummer didn’t suffer burns; it is believed he was in cardiac arrest when he was located. He died Tuesday.
“In the fire service, when you hear the word ‘mayday,’ your blood runs cold,” Langford said. “That’s the last thing we think he said before they found him.”
Plummer was one of four people pulled from the residential building in critical condition, Langford said. Another, Eladio Gomez, 37, who lived in the building, was pronounced dead that day, officials said.
On Wednesday, the mothers of the two deceased men — Felicia Townsend and Rita Velez — embraced during a memorial in front of the Engine 94 firehouse in Portage Park, where Plummer was stationed.
Both men are being spoken of fondly, and relatives miss them acutely. The two were vital figures in their families, and are being remembered as protectors, each in his own way.
Plummer held on for five days before dying, with his family at his bedside, Townsend said. She and her husband, Jermaine Plummer, were at their home Thursday when two fire chiefs came to pick them up and take them to the hospital in two separate vehicles. When Townsend asked if her son was still alive, they told her he was, so she had no idea what to expect when she arrived. She said the in-person notifications happen even for minor injuries, so she held out hope.
But Jermaine Plummer’s ride struck a more somber note.
“The chief that picked him up told him: ‘Make your peace with God,’” Townsend said while she and her husband were being interviewed by the Tribune.
Townsend said the family stayed at the hospital until Plummer died Tuesday.
“CFD has been great, the firefighters have been great,” Townsend said. “A lot of the guys that he came through the training academy with, the ones he made friendships with that will last a lifetime, they came to see him. But the outpouring of people who didn’t know him that wanted to come see him was incredible, too. Firefighters from everywhere, police officers from everywhere. It was very, very special and I will never forget it.
“Now we get to just breathe today, and tomorrow we’ll start to make plans,” she said.
‘He was phenomenal’
Mashawn Plummer believed in service, in giving back to the community. He grew up in Englewood and was a football player, playing defensive lineman for Quincy University, where he majored in prelaw. He was the first person in his family to graduate college and his example helped pave the way for others in the family to follow in his footsteps, his mother said.
His passion for service was so great that he abandoned plans to become an attorney and began studying for the fire and police exams. He took the fire test during his last year at Quincy and did well, but positions open so rarely he took other jobs in the seven years it would take for that life-altering call to finally come through, Townsend said.
Plummer wasn’t married and didn’t have children, but he placed such a premium on time with his family. When his younger sister, Ava Plummer, recently turned 17, Mashawn, fresh off a long shift, spent five hours hanging decorations with Townsend for Ava’s birthday party rather than getting some much-needed sleep.
“That’s the kind of person he was. He was phenomenal and I’m not just saying that because I was his mother,” Townsend said. “One of the training cadets who wasn’t very physical, he told Mashawn he wasn’t built for it and there were times when he was going to give up. Mashawn took him aside and said, ‘If you want this you can do this. All the negativity, that’s just noise, you put it out of your mind and you can accomplish anything.’”
As a high school student, first at all-boys Catholic school Hales Franciscan and then Eisenhower High School, Plummer enjoyed studying math, but his favorite subject, by far, was history. He was a lifelong and devoted history buff who enjoyed reading up on influential figures such as Malcom X, Muhammad Ali, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, relatives said. He enjoyed watching documentaries on many of the same subjects, but also liked sci-fi and fantasy, such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the TV show “Game of Thrones,” Jermaine Plummer said.
Mashawn Plummer also loved comic books — Marvel, specifically. He dabbled with DC Comics off-and-on through the years, but Marvel was the clear winner, so much so that a photo of Iron Man was the background on his cellphone.
His family said Plummer was more serious than jokester, but he knew how to cut loose and have fun with his friends, as evidenced by short videos of him jokingly dancing and lip-syncing to ‘80s music, like the “Dirty Dancing” soundtrack, and cutting up with friends.
Townsend said her son was a “finicky eater,” who enjoyed cheeseburgers — with ketchup only. He was more of a baker (his specialties were chocolate cupcakes and chocolate chip cookies) than a cook, but since he started as a firefighter he was picking up new dishes and increasingly asking Townsend to share her recipes, she said.
There was still so much he wanted to accomplish, Plummer’s family said. He hoped to coach football and to one day start a nonprofit aimed at mentoring kids, to morph his ongoing support and encouragement of kids in areas like Englewood and formalize it into a program.
Townsend struggles without knowing exactly what went wrong when her son entered the building Thursday, and how he came to be deprived of oxygen for so long that his brain swelled.
The official cause and manner of his death are pending, according to the medical examiner’s office.
“They can’t rule anything out. He wasn’t burned at all so we know he had all his equipment on,” she said. “He didn’t have any broken bones so nothing fell on him. I don’t know what went wrong and I can’t speculate. It’s hard. I just try to remind myself he went out doing what he loves. I just take comfort in knowing he went out as a hero, giving of himself until the end.”
Wednesday, coincidentally, was the day the Chicago Fire Department held its annual memorial event honoring 21 firefighters who lost their lives battling a fire at the Stockyards in 1910.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot extended condolences to Plummer’s family. “Within that one year of service he gave his all to protect residents of this city knowing that at any given point he may face danger,” she said. “Today we thank him for his service. We must wrap our arms around his grieving family.”
‘He had a lot more to do’
Eladio Gomez, who was known as “PeeWee,” was his family’s protector. He didn’t have any children, but looked after his mother, his younger sister and his two nieces and his grandfather.
“My girls were everything to him,” his sister, Nicole Gomez said, adding that he didn’t have kids of his own by choice.
Even before his nieces were born, he cared for his sister and his mother, especially after his dad died when he was 7 years old. Gomez grew up with his sister and mother in Roscoe Village.
“He was always my protector,” Nicole Gomez said. “He always looked out for his little sister. He always had my back. We were basically inseparable.”
As adults, Nicole and Eladio became even closer, she said. They took an annual trip to Six Flags Great America, usually right after her birthday in July.
Gomez loved to go fishing, play video games and loved to eat, especially sushi.
“He had a lot more to do,” Nicole said. “It wasn’t his time unfortunately. I know we probably all have our time but unfortunately it wasn’t his. He had a lot more out here to do, to make a difference in this world.”
He worked at Coin Flip, a Bitcoin ATM operator, for the last year where he was on his way to becoming a manager, his mother, Rita Velez, said.
He lived with his co-worker, who is in critical condition at Loyola, according to the mother and sister. The other victim, who is also hospitalized, is the co-worker’s girlfriend, they said.
Velez said Gomez was humble, caring, respectful and smart, always doing well in school. He would visit his grandfather almost every weekend, getting his groceries and checking on him.
Velez got a call from one of Eladio’s friends asking if she knew where he was Thursday. She thought he’d gone missing and went hospital to hospital looking for him, she said. When she got to Loyola, they told her to go to the morgue.
The autopsy wasn’t done yet so she had to wait until Saturday morning to see her son at the funeral home.
“That’s when I knew I found my son, and my heart was at ease,” she said.
Autopsy results were still pending.
When Velez and Nicole Gomez met with Plummer’s family Wednesday morning, they exchanged numbers and talked briefly, Nicole said.
“The world lost an amazing person that day,” Nicole said Tuesday night. “And tonight the world lost another amazing person with that firefighter passing away.”
Tribune photographer Brian Cassella contributed.
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