Pink Heals Tour Makes a Stop in Simsbury

They came dressed in pink: pink shirts, shoes, jackets, skirts and sunglasses. Why? To show support for the National Pink Heals Tour that made a stop in Simsbury on Tuesday. The tour helps spread awareness about the fight against breast cancer.

But many came for another reason: “I wanted to see the pink fire trucks,” said Grace Connors, who was sporting a light pink shirt.

She supports the cause, but to see these large vehicles in pink was also a draw for Connors and others.

“It’s a good cause,” said Adrienne Wolmetz, who had on a pink T-shirt and whose husband is a volunteer firefighter in Avon.

Wolmetz, who lives in Canton, brought her 6-month-old daughter Hailey, who was wearing pink-rimmed sunglasses. Wolmetz has seen the trucks before, but it’s a sight that does not get old, so she wanted to come again.

“It’s neat the way they support the cause,” she said of the Pink Heals Tour and the attraction of the fire trucks.

The three trucks — named Karen, Tonya and Elaine after real women — stopped at the main fire station at 871 Hopmeadow Street, after visiting the Connecticut Fire Academy in Windsor Locks and then continuing on to Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford.

In 2007, retired Glendale, AZ, firefighter Dave Graybill began coloring the uniforms and tools of the firefighting trade in pink to raise awareness of the struggle against cancer.

Graybill, who was in Simsbury, said he has traveled 73,000 miles and been to 208 cities. He described the tour as “apolitical and areligious” and instead emphasized love.

Graybill started the tour to raise awareness to support women fighting against all cancers, and the money raised by the tour’s appearances goes to nonprofit entities in the cities, towns and states it visits.

They sell T-shirts and stickers at each stop. People who have or survived a bout with cancer are invited to write messages on the trucks, as well as those who have lost loved ones to the disease.

Taking the pen to sign their names and leave a note were First Selectman Mary Glassman, the town’s Tax Collector Colleen O’Connor and the towns Director of Social Services Mickey Lecours-Beck — all cancer survivors.

Since its inception, the Pink Heals Tour and their Guardians of the Ribbon firefighters (Guardians of the Ribbon are firefighters in pink fire suits) have hit more than 1,000 cities across the country, and the pink trucks are decorated with more than 40,000 signatures from cancer fighters, survivors and loved ones sharing messages of love and hope, according to a news release.

Area firefighters have begun the Connecticut and Western Mass. Chapter of the organization and are raising money to purchase their own pink truck.

For more information on the national program, visit the website of the National Pink Heals Tour at http://www.pinkfiretrucks.org.