'ONE OF OUR OWN': FIREFIGHTER MAKES NEW FRIENDS

Mearlin Allen and his family didn't know they had friends in Knoxville, Tenn., until he had a heart attack.

Some of the friends who saved his life and cared for his family while he was hospitalized last July were in Cape Girardeau Friday to present him with a plaque making him an honorary Knoxville firefighter.

Allen, a firefighter in Cape Girardeau for nearly 34 years, was traveling with his wife, Darlene, to Virginia on July 19 when they stopped at a motel in Knoxville for the night. The next morning as they were checking out, Mearlin suffered a heart attack.

Minutes after dialing 911, firefighters came into the motel lobby where Darlene was trying to revive her husband with CPR.

As they started to give medical assistance, they noticed Mearlin was wearing a Cape Girardeau Fire Department T-shirt.

"The situation with Mearlin just happened upon us," said Jim Stephens of the Knoxville Fire Department. "We knew that the right thing to do was to take care of him like one of our own."

From that point through the next five days Mearlin spent in the hospital, Knoxville firefighters were constantly with the Allens.

A woman who spent the first hours with Darlene took Mearlin's sweat-drenched clothes to her home to wash and iron them. Firefighters bought several kinds of fast food to Darlene in the hospital.

When the Allens' four children, their spouses and two grandchildren arrived later, Knoxville firefighters fed them at a fire station, put them up in a motel and paid the costs.

Later in the week, Stephens and his wife, Gail, offered to take the Allens to the mountains while they waited for Mearlin to be released from the hospital. After getting encouragement from Mearlin and assurance that their cellular phones and beepers would make contact from the hospital to the mountains, they set off for a day in Gatlinburg, Tenn.

"There was always a firefighter with them," Mearlin said. "I didn't have any worries about my family while I was there."

Darlene said her family and the Stephens have developed a deep friendship.

"It's the difference between people who have nice conversations and those who really feel what you're thinking," she said.

The Stephens, who spent Thanksgiving with the Allens, agree.

"It's a terrible way to meet people," Jim Stephens said. "But it's a blessing in disguise somehow."