I met Lois when she visited the Missoula 9-1-1 Center to discuss her speaking at the 2004 Montana Association for Public Safety Communication Officials conference on June 8th, 2004. I assumed we would talk for about an hour about the content of her presentation and whether she would be a “good fit” to speak at our opening ceremonies. We talked for a couple of hours and I was impressed by her courage, her attitude and her smile. Lois eagerly consented to be our inspirational speaker. The audience was captivated by her performance, her presentation and her message. Her story and insight provided us with an opportunity to examine our own behavior and response to challenge and adversity. Lois shares her own experiences with candor and inspiration. To our delight, Lois bared her playful spirit. She uses humorous stories to illustrate her points. She reminds us that we can learn something from all of our experiences and most of all, it is essential to laugh. Her positive attitude and outlook on life is infectious. We embodied a new type of audience for Lois, I think. Everyone in the audience dealt with public safety communications, either as a dispatcher for law enforcement, fire and medical agencies, or technical support for public safety dispatch agencies. Dispatchers take emergency and non-emergency phone calls from the public and send law enforcement, fire or medical personnel to handle the incident. Anyone who calls has a complaint or a crisis. We tend to take our job and ourselves very seriously, sometimes too seriously. We work shift work. After all, 9-1-1 and emergency services must be available to the public 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Working long, odd hours in an isolated environment handling critical situations takes its toll on our health and our general well-being. Lois reminded us how important we are to the community and insisted that we must take care of ourselves. She explained that we can laugh to release tension and change our demeanor in order to cope with the feelings we keep inside as a result of our job demands. I wonder if Lois knows just how much she lightened our hearts that morning in June.
