Legacy includes inspiring Alameda first responders to carry blood plasma to help save lives
Doug Clifton, a revered retired firefighter, Captain and EMS Chief for the Alameda Fire Department and his partner Kathy Katz died last year on September 17 when a box truck slammed into their motorcycle as the two were en route to the 2025 Colorado Firefighter Memorial ceremony, an event they regularly attended.
The loss of Clifton and Katz left hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people whose lives they touched–and in some cases literally saved—in grief, shock, and disbelief.
More than 200 family, friends, and fellow firefighters packed Walnut Creek’s Lesher Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday, February 22, as two Alameda Fire rigs, including the City’s classic 1932 fire engine—a mainstay in Alameda’s 4th of July parade—parked silently outside, mobile monuments to mark the poignant occasion.
Speaker after speaker, including Clifton’s two daughters, Cassidy Clifton and Kendall Walker, Katz’s son, Evan Katz, and EMS Education Coordinator for the Alameda Fire Department Dan Gerard reprised a common thread that characterized the lives of the dynamic duo. They were a couple with very different personalities who shared great hearts and a common mission to better the health and well being of others.
Clifton was a soft spoken, kind, resourceful and visionary person always willing to lend a helping hand to friends or strangers in need. Whether professionally or just personally, he was a first responder.
Katz, a dyed in the wool, effusive and elemental New Yorker to the end, was a highly skilled hospital nurse for over 40 years and never missed the chance to let folks she met know what her considered opinions were on any number of subjects.
Clifton, an AFD apparatus operator dating back to 1979, EMT, mechanic, hunter, fisherman, photographer, and father was also a devoted music fan with a special penchant for the Grateful Dead and other Dead-inspired bands’ renditions of the specialized genre.
Gerard recounted Clifton’s compassion for others as well as his last heroic act—when he convinced AFD to be at the vanguard of EMS improvement by having Alameda EMTs carry blood plasma with them on their emergency runs.
“Even after he retired, he was deeply invested in the patients and EMS at Alameda. He would always ask how they were performing, and recently he started to ask when we were going to start carrying blood, the latest innovation in EMS. I kept telling him soon, we will be one of the first, I promise,” said Gerard.
“The day after I found out about the death of Doug and Kathy, the Alameda Fire Department was asked to participate in a new and upcoming county blood transfusion program,” he continued. “It is our hope that in the near future, the Alameda Fire Department will be providing the very best in trauma care through new innovations in pre-hospital care. That is what every paramedic and EMT at Alameda Fire must do to honor Doug, continue his mission of excellence and keep the memory of Doug alive.”
Retirement from AFD in 2007 gave Clifton the chance to answer the call of the road in his pickup or motorcycle and, as speaker after speaker noted, chase the next song.
The endless procession of live music performances he attended, small or large, would invariably find him “on the rail,” right up front on the edge of the stage, and it was there that he would greet old friends and perpetuate the cycle of making new ones.
The two were familiar faces to performers and audience members alike.
It was both their belief in helping others and the road that brought Clifton and Katz together in sheer serendipity when Clifton, spying the open hood of a pickup truck parked outside a show, dove in to work on the vehicle. When Katz, the owner, first set eyes on him tinkering away, her words were, “What’s that old man doing with my pickup?”
That chance encounter would bring the two together as soul mates for the rest of their years. Katz, the yin to Clifton’s yang, contrasted and complemented his soft-spoken, easygoing style with her own talkative and emphatic personality, and both were always cup-runneth-over with tales to tell.
The Walnut Creek ceremony followed one held last January in Portchester, New York, a village famed in Grateful Dead lore as cradle to the greatest Dead concert of all time in 1971, and home to an entire volunteer fire company of “Deadheads.”
Musical notes of a variety of stripes enriched the Walnut Creek event, with opening instrumentalist Pat Nevins softly setting the tone before the speakers took stage. A musical tribute by recording artists Jenna Mammina, along with songwriter, vocal stylist, and renowned pianist John R Burr, graced the stage with soothing songs and sounds.
Next, an entourage of about 20 members of the California Professional Firefighters Pipes and Drums Corps performed “Amazing Grace” and other traditional memorial tunes honoring the fallen.
In another special tribute, Alamedan John Frankel, a former Berkeley firefighter and world renowned gold-leaf glass artist, hand painted an emblematic Dead logo on one of the Corps’ bass drums with “Doug and Kathy” inscribed at the center of the drumskin.
Capping off the event on an uplifting note suited to the way the couple rolled, was a special musical tribute by key members of Jerry’s Middle Finger, one of Clifton’s favorite Jerry Garcia Band offshoot groups.
The songs were suited to the occasion and celebrated the lives of the couple, including “How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You,” “That’s What Love Will Do For You,” and “Forever Young” by Neil Young, a nod to the last live show Clifton and Katz attended.
The lyrics of “Ripple” stand as a fitting tribute for the lives of two people who gave so much to the world before they had to leave it. It was the road, “no simple highway, between the dawn and the dark of night,” that took them from this world, and it was the road that brought the two together.
Larry Freeman is a contributing writer for the Alameda Post. Contact him via [email protected].
