FireForce

FIREFORCE is a vocal sextet made up by professional career firefighters from the Garland, Texas Fire Department. The Group has sung together for five years and has traditionally sang our National Anthem at Texas Rangers baseball and Dallas Stars hockey games, Garland Star Spangled 4^th concerts with; Tracy Byrd, Tracy Lawrence, Morris Day and the Time, Asleep at the Wheel, Rick Springfield, Styx, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, Stepp’in Wolf, Rick Trevino, Jeffrey Osborn, Sonic Floor and the Newsboys.

FIREFORCE has now used its harmonic talent to produce a Christmas CD entitled “Home for Christmas” to help children and teenagers who suffer from the mental and physical scares of being burned by fire.

One song on the “Home for Christmas” CD will feature Sara Pyszka who has benefited from a device proved called DynaVox. Nineteen-year-old Sara Pyszka, is intelligent, attractive and vivacious; she loves to sing, dance and listen to music; and like thousands of other high school graduates, she left home this August to enter college.  But there’s something that sets Sara apart from her peers – because she was born with cerebral palsy, her motor skills are severely limited and she moves with a motorized wheelchair and is unable to communicate with her natural voice.

Born and raised in suburban Pittsburgh, PA, two things have remained constant for Sara throughout her 19 years: she has faced tremendous challenges doing things that most people take for granted; and she never has allowed those challenges to impede her from pursuing and achieving her goals.

Several years ago, Sara began communicating with a DynaVox 3100 speech-generating device, a high-performance communication system known generically as an augmentative and alterative communication (AAC) device.  Mounted desk-style on her wheelchair, the screen of Sara’s DynaVox constantly scans through sets of letters, words and symbols from which she creates words and phrases by clicking a switch on the headrest of her wheelchair – much the way a computer user clicks a mouse.

Sara has been invited to sing the national anthem at Jacob’s Field in Cleveland, PNC Park in Pittsburg and at the Republican National Convention in New York.