Two extraordinary lives

Pinnacol has as its core mission providing workers compensation insurance protection to Colorado employers and their employees. Ultimately its about protecting life through preventing accidents on the job wherever possible and ensuring care when an injury does occur.

This morning I was talking with someone and asked why the flags were again at half-staff in front of our building. My first assumption was that it was a soldier killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. That was not the case - there were actually two reasons for the flags to be lowered this morning. One was  Governor Hickenlooper's decree that flags be lowered to half-staff on all public buildings statewide on Tuesday, March 15 in honor of Limon police officer Jay Sheridan, 27, of Limon. Sheridan was killed on the job March 9 while serving a fugitive warrant in Limon, 90 miles east of Denver. The other was to honor Corporal Frank Buckles, the last of the more than 5 million Americans who served during World War I. He died Feb. 22 at his home in West Virginia at the age of 110.

Quite a contrast between a life cut short too soon and another that witnessed more than a century's worth of American, and world, history. Frank Buckles was born in 1901 and was 14 years old when Pinnacol's predecessor first was established in 1915. When the U.S. entered World War I he first sought to enlist in the Marine Corp. and then the Navy but was turned down by both. He finally successful in enlisting in the Army in August 1917 at the ripe old age of 16. Pinnacol doesn't even accept applications from candidates this young but off to war Mr. Buckles went.

Buckles at age 16

Buckles was sent to Europe on the RMS Carpathia, which had rescued RMS Titanic survivors five years earlier. While on the Carpathia, Buckles spoke with crew members who had taken part in the rescue of Titanic survivors. Once in Europe he served in England and France as an ambulance driver. Discharged in 1920 he then worked for a variety of shipping companies and was in the Phillipines when Japan invaded in 1941. He would be a prisoner of war for the next 3 1/2 years.

After the second World War he returned to the U.S., ultimately settling on a farm in West Virginia and was still driving a tractor at the age of 103. When asked about the secret of his long life, Buckles replied: "Hope," adding, "When you start to die... don't." Limon Officer Jay Sheridan didn't get that option, and, for today at least, two extraordinary lives will be remembered and honored.