RACINE - As bagpipes mournfully wailed, and firefighters in crisp dress blue uniforms saluted, Brian Sanders' flag-draped coffin was loaded aboard Engine 1 for one final journey through Racine.
Down Sixth Street, from the Holy Communion Church where friends, family and fellow firefighters, eulogized him. Past Station 1, where Sanders' last served as a lieutenant before the cancer that eventually killed him forced him to leave. Past the on-duty firefighters, also at attention and in salute.
To Mound Cemetery, where Racine Fire Department Lt. Brian Sanders, 46, was laid to rest.
One last ride about Engine 1, which Sanders had been assigned to. One last visit to Station 1, where he had worked.
Sanders had been many things in his life, said those who knew him at his funeral. A husband, a father, a firefighter. A Chicago Bears fan. He was athletic and competitive, willing to do what it took to win. He was Irish, and proud of it. He was brutishly strong, but gentle and caring. He was a stand-up guy who would give someone the shirt off his back and stand by his friends.
He was, to those who knew him, affectionately known as "Booger." Grandpa Booger to his grandchildren.
"Today," said James Buchholz, a firefighter and friend, as stood in front of mourners at the church Wednesday morning, "we stand by our friend to honor his life and hold one last Boogerfest."
Sanders was also a victim of cancer. It was first detected as a malignant, pea-sized lump taken from his head. Then doctors discovered two tumors growing inside his brain. Then they realized the cancer had spread to his left lung, colon, stomach and liver.
Just over a year later, on June 18, that cancer killed Sanders.
But it didn't beat him.
"All of us should learn something about ourselves by watching Brian remain positive and upbeat, even as inside, his world was crumbling," friend Donald Kuehns said.
Said friend Robert Wilbershide, quoting former Chicago Bears' football coach George Halas on the death of Brian Piccolo: "Don't remember how Brian died. Remember how he lived. Know how he lived."
This was how Sanders lived: Completely.
The Rev. Walter Hermanns said life is a gift to be embraced; to be lived to the fullest, not timidly. Sanders embraced life, Hermanns said. Were Sanders there that day, Hermanns said, he might have told people not to feel sorry for him. "He had 46 years of good life. Maybe they should feel sorry for a child that has died.
"I kind of suspect that if Brian was here ... he would be moved," Hermanns said. "But I also suspect that after the service was over, he would want us to get on with life."
Sanders was proud to be a firefighter, they said.
"God's blueprint for a firefighter is Brian Sanders," said James Buchholz. "I don't believe Brian chose the profession of a firefighter so much as the profession chose him.
"He was the one you wanted holding the ladder when the safety of the ground got farther and farther away. He was the one you wanted to see climb the ladder when your life hung in the balance.
"As good as he was at firefighting, he was an even better husband and father," Buchholz said.
Krista Ramsey was Sanders' stepdaughter, but said she felt like his daughter. Ramsey said Sanders called her own daughter his "little princess."
"I remember when she came home and said `I'm the most beautiful girl in the world, because grandpa said so,' "
Ramsey said.
Pat Lewno said that Sanders never missed his children's swimming meets, even if it meant juggling his work schedule or working extra hours.
Sanders, Buchholz and others said, was known for his playful sense of humor. Division Chief James Madisen told of a bet Sanders once made with a rookie firefighter. He bet that the Chicago Bears wouldn't win a game in Chicago all year.
The rookie took that bet. He lost. That year, the Bears played all their home games in Champaign, Ill.
The rookie had been"Boogerized."
"No one ... was immune to his sense of humor," Buchholz said. "His laughter was good medicine, and it made us all well."
