APPLETON, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Wednesday marks five years since the line of duty death of Appleton firefighter Mitch Lundgaard.
The 36-year-old married father of three was on a medical call when he was shot and killed by the man whose life he had just helped to save.
“Sometimes it seems like it was yesterday and sometimes it seems so long ago,” said his widow, Lindsey Lundgaard-Lindberg.
“I can’t believe it’s been five years. I could recite that entire thing, exactly what happened that day to you right now,” said Capt. Scott Pelkin of the Appleton Fire Department.
Five years after Lundgaard, a 14-year veteran with the Appleton Fire Department, was killed, the weight of his loss continues to be felt by not only those who worked with him.
“That’s a day that changed things at the fire department here, forever, and we’ll never forget it,” Pelkin said.
But also by those who loved him, including his wife and their three sons.
“I see really how much the boys have changed in the last five years. I mean they were 4, 7 and 9 when this happened and now I have a 14-, 12- and 9-year-old on Sunday,” said Lundgaard-Lindberg. “My boys have actually been kind of struggling a little lately, like expressing more feelings of how they’ve felt over the last five years and they love to see other people honoring their dad and remembering their dad, that’s really important to them.”
Just last year, the main post office in Appleton was named in honor of Lundgaard, something that took an act of Congress.
And the city of Appleton continues to work on Lundgaard Park.
“People will come to this park for years to come and always know or be curious about Mitch’s story and that’s really special to me that my kids can come here, my kids can bring their kids here for years to come,” Lundgaard-Lindberg said.
In the shadows of Appleton Fire Station 6, the park includes sport courts and a fire department themed playground, a place Lundgaard’s family says he would have loved to come and play with his boys.
“He loved playgrounds. He loved parks,” Lundgaard-Lindberg said. “That’s one of the things he did with the kids on his days off. He would go explore playgrounds across the city. He loved the ones with the big slides, so that is why we had one of the big requests here. This was a great way to remember him and honor him.”
As the anniversary of his death approaches, those closest to Lundgaard have created what they’re calling calling Mitch’s Memorial Week.
“We kind of encourage the community to do things to remember Mitch and the boys can see how many people Mitch had an impact on,” said Lundgaard-Lindberg.
Monday is #MitchMakerMonday. It was workout he was doing when his final call came in.
On Tuesday the family hopes people publicly share stories of Lundgaard. And if you didn’t know him, maybe tell someone how you felt when you heard what happened to him.
While #MitchWearWednesday is a day to pull out a Mitch shirt, #ThrowbackThursday is for sharing an old picture of Lundgaard. Friday is all about his favorites.
“Drink a Miller Lite, maybe an old fashioned, eat a brownie or a chicken wing,” Lundgaard-Lindberg said.
And on Saturday, spend the day enjoying sports because that’s what Lundgaard loved to do with him boys.
And while Lindsey Lundgaard-Lindberg created #MitchMemorialWeek to help her sons, the community support continues to lift all those who knew Mitch Lundgaard.
Comments