Firefighters are exposed to death on a scale the public never sees.

Victor Stagnaro has spent his career making sure the fire service never forgets its own, and fighting to shrink the list of names read each year.

Victor is the CEO of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation and leads its affiliate, the First Responder Center for Excellence. Before that: 25 years with the Prince George's County Fire/EMS Department, and a relationship with the Foundation dating back to the late 1990s as incident commander for the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Weekend.

Recorded live at the FRCE Health and Wellness Symposium at the University of Iowa, this conversation goes to the places the fire service is only now learning to talk about: cancer and suicide now recognized as line-of-duty deaths, and why the number of names honored each year is growing. The scholarships and children's grief camp that carry Fire Hero families forward. The culture conversation about risk and the cowboy mindset. What daily exposure to death does to firefighters and the people who love them. And what actually works when a department decides to build peer support, told through the story of Charleston and the FDNY.

His challenge to every firefighter at the symposium: don't just come to learn. Decide what you're going to do with it.

Support the mission:

National Fallen Firefighters Foundation: firehero.org

First Responder Center for Excellence: firstrespondercenter.org

This episode is brought to you by SPOKE, our Founding Premier Sponsor and Film Partner. Watch the trailer at spokemovie.com