CLINTON, Ia. — As rumblings spread throughout Clinton that a firefighter had been killed in an early morning blaze, Dennis Iverson, 61, drove to the nearest hardware store and bought red bulbs to replace the gold ones that normally light his porch.

The red represented “the thin red line,” or the courage alive in firefighters' blood to face flames day after day, he said.

“He made the ultimate sacrifice for me and my community and I wanted his family to know that I won’t forget him,” Iverson said.

Red lights spread quickly in this small industrial river town as the community's worst fear was confirmed: Lt. Eric Hosette had not survived his injuries.

Within hours, red ribbons were hung all over town and red construction paper formed homemade red lines across residents’ windows. An official memorial of red roses, teddy bears and hundreds of cards and children's drawings sprung up inside the firehouse. Mounds of flowers formed an unofficial shrine under the American flag gracing the station's entrance.

With nearly every corner of Clinton marked by a memorial to the fallen officer, it felt as though, out of pure shock and grief, community members sought to do something, anything to salve the hurt they were feeling — even if that was just to put up a red light.

Despite the heavy, thick snow, nearly a thousand people came out Saturday afternoon to acknowledge that Lt. Hosette’s watch had ended a week earlier when a grain silo at the Archer Daniels Midland building exploded. Thought to be under control and stable, Hosette, 33, was fighting the fire “100 plus feet off the ground” when the blast occurred, Clinton City Administrator Matt Brooke told reporters in the days after.

Clinton firefighter Adam Cain, 23, was injured severely in the explosion and continues to recover at University of Iowa Hospital in Iowa City.

More than half of those who gathered in the face of multiple weather warnings Saturday were firefighters. As departments queued for the procession, fancy rigs from cities like Des Moines and Cedar Rapids mingled with the smaller, almost vintage-looking trucks from volunteer departments in Goose Lake and Wheatland. Departments from as far away as Illinois and Kansas lined up to honor their fallen comrade.

Standing at attention, waiting for the bagpipers to lead the casket to the stage, was Bunker, the Calamus Volunteer Fire Department’s dog. His owners, Tammy Sedgwick and her husband Joe, volunteer at the department and felt called to be in attendance to "show respect for a brother lost," Tammy said.

In a rural county like Clinton, Joe said, everyone pitches in to get the work done. They unify in times of grief.

“We have firefighters that are from this side of the county working on the other side of the county and that's normal," he said. "We all just come together. We're all brothers and sisters.”

Legacies

If firefighting runs in the blood, Hosette was predisposed to the occupation. His grandfather, Dick Grimm, spent 50 years working at the Charlotte fire department. For the last 30, he was chief.

As a child, Hosette ran in between the firetrucks, soaking up all he could from his grandfather, said Brad Burken, assistant fire chief in Charlotte.

Hosette grew up in Camanche, a town without a junior firefighter program, forcing him to wait until he was 18 to join the department. As soon as that particular trip around the sun came, he did just that.

Cain also followed in his father’s footsteps. Cain’s dad is the fire chief in Goose Lake and he became a junior firefighter right when he turned 16.

"Legacies," as these generations of firefighters are called, are common in the industry, said Ryan Hanghian, the vice president of Iowa Professional Fire Fighters.

"There's a huge influence among family members because they see what it is like to serve and they want to do that too," he said. "This is a calling in which people just want to give to their community, and they want to serve people at a higher level than just your standard day-to-day life allows."

After Hosette got his feet wet in Camanche, he joined his grandfather in Charlotte, where he stayed as a volunteer even after he was hired at the Clinton Fire Department in 2006.

He married his sweetheart Kelly Mohr in 2010 and the couple had one daughter, Addalyn.

Even as his family grew and jobs changed, Hosette stayed close to his grandfather. A picture of the two beaming, both wearing firefighters’ uniforms, hung in a place of honor right next to his casket at Friday night's visitation.

Weeks before his death, Hosette had been elected by his fellow firefighters to be the new chief of the Charlotte department.

Finally, he would have been able to really follow in his beloved grandfather’s footsteps.

'Because her daddy loved it'

Hosette excelled at the Clinton department, Chief Mike Brown said in his eulogy.

He had been promoted to lieutenant in 2017 and was going to test for Battalion Chief this spring. Brown said there was no ceiling for this “ambitious firefighter."

“He was the driving force behind so many things in our station," Brown said. "When you needed something done, he's the guy that answered the bell.”

Pointing at a truck near the stage, Brown said that it had "Hoss’ DNA all over it." Hoss, as Hosette was known, took that vehicle from a drawing to a working truck on the floor of their firehouse, Brown said.

Despite the emotions of a life lost too soon, Saturday's speakers tried to move past the darkness of Hosette’s death and into the light of his life.

"Tonight, after the service is over, he will enjoy his most favorite movie, “Smokey and the Bandit,” said Clinton Mayor Mark Vulich, envisioning what Hosette might do in the afterlife. “And he will have an opportunity to say 'Hi' to Burt Reynolds.”

Hoss’ fun side was on display at the visitation too. A can of Busch Light sat inside his casket near a toy version of his beloved Case tractor. A member of the Mount Pleasant Old Threshers, Hosette spent a lot of his off-time restoring old tractors.

When he wasn’t doing that, he was hanging out with his daughter, who "was the apple of his eye," according to his obituary. His social media shows a bright blonde girl standing next to her dad’s tractor and posed in the cab of a Clinton fire truck.

Taking the stage after the rock song “Hero of the Day” played, Pastor Ron Lott said that "Addy" had been head-banging to that song, one “she loved because her daddy loved it.”

Heroes

As mourners celebrated Hosette's life and mourned its early end, many offered thoughts and prayers for Cain, who remains in critical condition.

“The first release on Adam’s condition may have led everyone to believe that he was about to walk out the door in the next few days,” his father Kevin Cain said in a statement.

Instead, he is facing the toughest part of his recovery in Iowa City as "his lungs swell and weep fluids," Kevin said.

As the funeral wound down, everyone stood rapt by what was happening on stage. Even as thick snow weighed down coats, no one left. No one grumbled about the cold or shook themselves for warmth.

Firefighters defy our most innate response: to flee in the face of danger. Instead of running away, they run towards it again and again and again.

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I think that regularity is what makes the pain of a public servant's death feel so universal. Hosette made the ultimate sacrifice fighting an industrial blaze, but he would have tried just as hard battling a fire at your house or saving your kid from a burning building.

In a fractured world where coffee dates get rescheduled two or three times and emails sit in draft folders for weeks, there’s comfort in knowing that if we ever need firefighters, they are a call away — and they will show up

So, when they need us, we show up.

After the mourners have gone and the news cameras have dimmed, Hosette’s life and work at the Clinton Fire Department won’t be forgotten.

And despite knowing an intimate level that the danger in this job is very, very real, Clinton firefighters — and ones all over eastern Iowa — will still kiss their families goodbye and report for work. They will still answer the call.

That’s the definition of a hero.

Looking down at her dog, Sedgwick agreed. You always pray that something like this never happens, she said.

"But when the tones go off, you go," she said. "You just go.”

COURTNEY CROWDER, the Register's Iowa Columnist, traverses the state's 99 counties telling Iowans' stories. You can contact her at (515) 284-8360 or ccrowder@dmreg.com. Follow her on Twitter @courtneycare.