via Jill Harmacinski, Eagle Tribune
As a father of two boys, Firefighter Ignacio Rodriguez recognizes that children are being bombarded with information about the severity of the coronavirus pandemic all day, everyday. "Right now, especially being a kid, you can't listen to the radio or TV or be on the internet without hearing about all the bad things happening," Rodriguez said. So Rodriguez, 28, decided he and his fellow Group 2 firefighters at the Lawrence Fire Department could do something positive. From vistas throughout the firehouse, Rodriguez and his co-workers created a video where they read the children's story "No Dragons For Tea" by Jean Pendziwol. "No Dragons For Tea" is the story of a young girl who meets a fire-breathing dragon and invites him to her house for tea. But during the visit, the dragon sneezes and flames shoot from his mouth and nose. Firefighters take turns reading the pages, all the while wearing protective gloves, sitting in and on top of firetrucks, standing next to the deputy chief's SUV, inside the deputy chief's car and elsewhere. "We thought it would be awesome for the kids to see us in our own environment," said Rodriguez, a Lawrence native going into his fifth year as a city firefighter.