The fallen — Assistant Chief Jamie Middlebrook, 5 August 2014

1973–2014 · LINE OF DUTY

The department's memorial stands for one name, and the record tells it whole. James Curtis "Jamie" Middlebrook, born 2 August 1973 to Robert and Carolyn Middlebrook, followed his father into the New Carlisle department and served as a volunteer firefighter for over twenty years, rising to Assistant Chief; he was employed through the town as assistant chief of the ambulance department, and he had survived a 2003 diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia to volunteer for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Late on 5 August 2014, at an industrial barn fire at K-Fex Excavating & Trucking just west of town in La Porte County, Middlebrook and firefighter Matt O'Donnell were laying hose inside the building when the ceiling collapsed; O'Donnell was carried out with a broken ankle, and Middlebrook, 41, was killed — blunt-force trauma, the La Porte County Coroner found. His father, former Chief Robert Middlebrook, was on the scene and was the one who established that his son was still inside. The town shut down for the funeral on 11 August 2014: services at Bethel College in Mishawaka, a seventeen-mile procession through New Carlisle under a flag hung from two ladder trucks, past the station as his final page went out, more than seven hundred firefighters standing at the graveside in New Carlisle Cemetery. Governor Mike Pence issued a statement; the Indiana Fallen Fire Fighters Memorial took his name in 2015; donations ran to a Jamie Middlebrook Memorial Fund at area 1st Source Bank locations; and the department's own page carries his memorial image today. A National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health investigation followed; its report is the settler for the incident's technical record.

Sources:

1. National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, roll entry for James Curtis Middlebrook (firehero.org): birth, family, the ambulance-department post, the leukemia course, the death date and manner. Read first-hand.
2. South Bend Tribune reporting, 7 and 12 Aug 2014, via Firehouse and FireRescue1: the collapse, the coroner's finding, the funeral and procession, Chief Schweizer's part, the memorial fund.
3. Town Council minutes, 22 Sep 2015: the town's proclamation and the appropriation sending Bob and Carol Middlebrook to the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Service Weekend.
4. Indiana Department of Homeland Security, Hoosier Responder, Sept 2015: Middlebrook honored at the Indiana Fallen Fire Fighters Annual Remembrance.