![]() It was like watching a perfectly choreographed team. How everything unfolds, just blew my mind. As he continued to watch his dad and his teammates from a front-row seat, Brayden recalls being particularly impressed by how well everyone worked together. Life hasn’t always been easy, and I have had many chances to give up, but I never took the easy way out.”īrayden’s search for camaraderie drew him even more strongly to the fire service. “But I have worked hard to show my peers and the adults around me that I am a dedicated, respectful, and kind individual. “I’ve always had to fight twice as hard to gain the respect and recognition I deserve,” Brayden wrote in a scholarship essay. He eventually opened up to his sister Madeira, who is five years older and also African American, and it became an important bonding experience for the two of them. Later I realized that a little helping hand here and there isn’t such a bad thing,” Brayden recalls with a smile. “I also thought I didn’t need any help, and I could handle it all myself. And as he looked around, none of his teachers or coaches shared his experience. It was also disconcerting that his parents, who were always loving and supportive - and somehow managed to make each one of their children feel like “number one,” Brayden adds with a chuckle - didn’t have all the answers this time. I had a lot of questions, and I didn’t know how to express how I was feeling.” “When we all started figuring out that I was different, it was a surreal experience. He is now the second youngest, after his youngest sister, Hazel, became part of the family two years ago.Īt times, Brayden says, it was confusing growing up in a mixed-race family in a majority-white state.ĭuring his younger years, none of his classmates or friends “batted an eye” at the fact that Brayden didn’t look like them, but that started to change around the third grade. ![]() Brayden grew up as the youngest of four children in a blended household of biological and adopted siblings. His dad worked at General Electric, and his mom stayed home to manage the household. Now, at 17, he is an official junior member of the North Clarendon department, and he’ll be going to an exclusive fire sciences program in the fall.īrayden was born in Philadelphia and was adopted by the Bixbys, a working-class couple from North Clarendon, Vermont, when he was a couple of weeks old. “I got an exclusive peek at how that life worked.”īrayden attended his first department meeting at age seven and rode along to his first fire call at 10. “As soon as I could walk, I was right with him,” Brayden says. But his passion burned deeper and longer than most, something that was no doubt stoked by his father, who is a deputy chief with the local volunteer department. Like many young boys, he grew up playing with fire trucks in the driveway and wearing a fireman costume as everyday clothing. Brayden Bixby, a senior at Mill River Union High School, wants to be a firefighter.
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