The photo and everything after
The keynote. April 19, 1995, the twenty years of silence that followed, and what it cost him before he asked for help.
Chris Fields
You can look fine and still be falling apart. Chris Fields shows people how to stop pretending and start to recover.
On April 19, 1995, Chris Fields carried a one-year-old girl out of the rubble in Oklahoma City. A photograph of that moment went around the world. What it never showed was the twenty years that followed: the calls that stacked up, the silence he kept, and how close it brought him to losing his family, his career and his life.
He speaks now for anyone who looks fine on paper and is barely holding it together, and for the people who love them.
31 yearson the Oklahoma City Fire Department, retiring as a major in 2017
5,000people reached each year
12speaking events a year, from academy classes to national conferences
Speaking
What he talks about
Chris speaks at about a dozen events a year, to roughly five thousand first responders, their families and the clinicians who treat them. He tailors the talk to the room, whether that room is a recruit class, a statewide conference, or a banquet with spouses at the tables.
The mask
Why the people everyone leans on are often the last to admit they are struggling, and what it costs them to keep performing strength at work and at home.
Where it started
Why the hardest years often trace back to something much older, and why naming it was the turning point in his recovery.
The work behind the talk
The work does not stop at the podium
Chris is a peer team member for the Oklahoma First Responder Wellness Division, providing peer support and critical incident stress management to firefighters and other first responders across the state. He instructs at the Oklahoma City Fire Department L.E.A.D. Academy, where the future officers and chiefs of his old department learn what silence costs.
He serves on the advisory boards of the Survive First Foundation and the Quell Foundation, whose documentary Lift the Mask: Sound the Alarm features him as one of its subjects.
He does not call himself a hero. He calls himself a survivor.
Podcast
Trauma Behind the Badge
Chris co-hosts a weekly conversation about responder mental health with Chris Scallon, a retired Norfolk police sergeant and practicing clinician, and Raul Rivas, the Orlando officer who stopped the Pulse nightclub shooter. Tough subjects, handled by people who have lived them.
Press
Where his story has been told
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Retired Firefighter Looks Back at Tragedy of Oklahoma City Bombing, 30 Years Later
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30 Years Later: First Responders Reflect on Oklahoma City Bombing Response
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Retired Firefighter Reflects on Oklahoma City Bombing Response
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The Oklahoma City Bombing Was 30 Years Ago. Some Survivors Worry America Didn't Learn the Lesson
Bring Chris to your organization or event
Tell him the room, the date and who will be sitting in it.