HOLLISTER
Diana Will knew her husband’s job was dangerous.
In the weeks since his death, people have told her they can’t even imagine.
She said it’s not really that you can’t, it’s that you don’t. Even a few weeks before her husband’s death, when fire passed over another CalFire heavy equipment operator and burned him in Southern California, Matthew Will told her not to worry.
“He said, ‘Never worry until you see two state vehicles coming up your driveway,'” Diana Will said.
On Oct. 8 they came.
Matthew Will’s bulldozer fell down a steep hillside while fighting the Colorado Fire near Big Sur in southern Monterey County that day. He was rushed to a San Jose-area hospital. Diana said he had passed when she got there.
“The last time I talked to him we told each other we loved each other and we missed each other,” Diana Will said.
But she realizes her family is luckier than most who’ve been stricken with widowhood.
Many pay for their husband’s death with the burden of second jobs or forfeiture of their child’s college education in addition to the grief and often eternal heartache.
The brotherhood of firefighters throughout California and generosity of a caring public have made life easier on the Wills, if only financially. Diana Will knows this and appreciates it. She is grateful for everyone who’s donated or sent condolences.
She plans to go back to college, earn a degree and go to work, possibly as a medical technician. Whatever she does, it’s paid for, and she wants to raise her children.
“I’m raising my own kids,” Diana said. “The baby-sitter’s not.”
Diana forever has her memories with Matt.
Despite the couple being so young – Matt, 30, and Diana, 31 – those memories reach back well before she was a Mrs. and either one could drive.
They grew up together in the small town of Campo, Calif., southeast of San Diego and less than two miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.
It’s there they met in elementary school and Matthew would later sneak a peak at a fluent Diana’s Spanish test in high school. One day, he asked her to go shopping. And that was it.
“Everybody knew it was eventually going to happen,” Diana Will said.
Then came marriage and a family. Trysten was first, Elsie second. They’re now 10 and 8 years old respectively, students at Spring Grove School four years after their father accepted a job at CalFire’s Hollister Air Attack Base.
Telling them was the most difficult, Diana Will said.
Diana and the children are doing as well as could be expected, she said. She makes plans for the family to stay busy.
“Laying in bed and moping is not an option for me,” she said.
Matthew’s days off would be spent with the family, playing Wheel of Fortune on one of several video game systems, or going shopping.
The family shared his love for NASCAR. Tysten believes his dad is somewhere up there chatting up Dale Ernhardt Sr., Diana said.
Matthew Will’s job was to save lives. He continues doing so in death as an organ donor.
Gwenn Silva, a donor family advocate for the California Transplant Donor Network, said all families are different.
“The majority of them, knowing that their loved one has given the gift of life will eventually be very helpful,” Silva said.
