VIDEO: For people working stressful first-responder jobs, there’s added significance to having a local bar or pub where everybody knows your name and your line of work. “This is what we do. We get together. We talk about problems back and forth and kind of, you know, figure out how we’re going to resolve the world,” said firefighter Juan Acosta, as he described what he and his colleagues often do after work. One day, the realization that those gatherings could offer support and healing led the California native to an idea. “We were all talking about just having a place we could gather, firefighters, law enforcement, EMS,” Acosta said. “We just all get together, enjoy each other’s brotherhood, [and] be able to talk through things.”
Those talks turned into a non-profit called the Kitchen Table Foundation. The organization is essentially a support group that sets aside time at a regular place to decompress from the stressful and sometimes awful things cops, paramedics, and firefighters see. “I still remember how it happened. They were sitting on the patio. I remember the table,” explained Justin Janney, the owner of the generic yet aptly named Local Tavern, where those early talks took place. “There’s four guys out there. Being able to serve them and getting to hear their stories, and hear the camaraderie and, you know, the genuine care for each other.”
Now, Janney’s high tops and bar stools have become the symbolic kitchen tables in the organization’s name, which is significant to life in the firehouse. “At the firehouse, all the firefighters, before and after calls, they sit down and they eat together and they break bread, and they can just be their true, authentic selves,” said Serena Krone, the secretary/treasurer of the Kitchen Table Foundation. “There’s no judgment, no worrying about your job being in jeopardy, and knowing that you are not alone,” she said. “You know, if I haven’t been through it, somebody else probably has, and that we can be there and be that family.”
Krone is a trained EMT and a native of Bryant, who realized quickly how important that family connection is on this job. Krone’s sister, Brittany Wildhaber, led the way as an EMT and volunteer firefighter, but it became a calling for Krone when she joined one month after Wildhaber’s death by suicide. With estimates indicating more than 30% of first responders will deal with mental health issues, and as many as one out of every four will have thoughts of suicide, the Kitchen Table Foundation is quick to offer formal resources like counseling or formal treatment through a firefighters’ union. That help is on stand-by beyond the informal support that comes from breaking bread. “Just seeing them talking about their personal stories and how it affected them, just bringing that trauma out, I feel it. I can see that,” said Acosta. “You see that smile, and I’m like, ‘this is healing.’ It’s gathering, connecting, and healing.”
That process moves outside the Local Tavern at this time of year with events surrounding the annual 9/11 memorials. The foundation played a role in an appreciation day and “stair climb” at Dickie Stephens Park in North Little Rock and has another one planned at Hornet Arena at Bryant High School on September 20. “These [are] brave men and women that serve the community and have come in here and share their stories,” said Janney. “You see them cry, you see them hug it out. You see them laugh. There’s just nothing like it.” Nothing like it, perhaps for now, if Acosta has any say in the matter. “This is going to go nationally,” he said. “Just the movement and the need for the brotherhood and sisterhood together, we’re able to share those emotions together.”
