TOLEDO, OH (Toledo News Now) - It was an image that went viral; a picture of two small children wearing firefighter gear and saluting while Stephen Machcinski's funeral procession passed by.
The children in the picture are now known to be 6-year-old Braden and 3-year-old Kierra. Their father Larry Cready took them to Steve Machcinski's funeral procession last year.
“My little boy has a firefighter outfit, he put it on, my daughter put her TFD t-shirt on and we stood out there. And my boy Braden, when the fire trucks first started passing, threw a salute up and he held it the entire time, and this is a 6-year-old boy, the entire procession,” said Cready.
An anonymous woman snapped the picture and put it online. Instantly it went viral. It then took months, but the photographer was found and the children now named. Never the less it made a huge impact on TFD.
“They said, ‘we would especially like to thank the junior firefighters in the picture below. They remind us of what we do,' I choke up a little bit a year later, but it was good,” said Cready.
