The Call After the Call Mark Hammond’s Mission to Help Those Who Help Others

The Call After the Call

Mark Hammond’s Mission to Help Those Who Help Others

Sasha Bush

The Ashland Beacon

For more than four decades, Mark Hammond has answered the call. Long before he became the Coroner for Boyd County or a Regional Training Coordinator for the Kentucky Fire Commission, Hammond was a teenager in Louisa, Kentucky, discovering a life of service that would take him through some of the most difficult moments imaginable.

Now, after 42 years in emergency services, Hammond is turning those experiences into something deeply personal: a book designed to help the people who spend their lives helping everyone else.

“I have been involved in emergency services since I was 15,” Hammond explains. Over the years, he witnessed not only the emergencies themselves, but also the ways responders sometimes cope with what they see.

“I have seen and probably been a part of doing self-destructive things after certain calls as coping mechanisms,” he says. “We all have because until you have did this job or truly been around people that do the job it is hard to explain.” That understanding is at the heart of Hammond’s new book.

Emergency services are often described in terms of courage, dedication and the ability to perform under pressure. But behind the uniform, the badge, the radio and the flashing lights are human beings who see things most people will never see—and who must somehow learn to live with those experiences after the call ends.

For Hammond, it is a subject that has been discussed far too little for far too long. “It’s a huge family and over the years mental health has not been talked about enough,” he says. “We are finally having those conversations.”

Hammond wanted his book to contribute to that conversation in a way that recognized the unique experiences of different emergency-service professions. Rather than treating responders as one group, he set out to explore the individual challenges faced by those working in different disciplines.

  “I have not seen books that address all facets of emergency services breaking down chapters for dispatchers, emergency department nurses and doctors, first responders police, fire, and EMS and death investigators,” he says. “Every job has a different story to tell how it affects them.”

That distinction matters to Hammond because he has seen the consequences firsthand. “I’ve had really good friends that have turned to suicide and really good friends that have destroyed themselves their families and their work because of trauma from the job,” he says. “And I wanted to bring awareness to it.”

The idea wasn't born overnight. Hammond had thought about writing the book for years, but as conversations about mental health in emergency services increasingly moved into the public spotlight, he decided it was time to put his experiences and research onto paper. “I have truly thought about it for years,” he says, “but as the talking came more and more to the forefront I decided to start writing and researching and putting it into a book.”

What emerged was more than a collection of personal observations. Hammond designed the first book specifically for responders, with individual chapters addressing different disciplines within emergency services and resources intended to help readers recognize and address what they may be experiencing.

The goal is not simply to tell responders that they should take care of themselves. It is to help them understand what they are experiencing in the first place.

“I hope that someone can take the book and read it and think yes that’s me,” Hammond says. “Relate to the book and dig deep into themselves to learn they are not alone in this at all.”

That message—that no responder has to suffer alone—may be one of the book's most important.

“There are resources for individuals as well as families in the books,” Hammond says. “The biggest take away is hopefully someone seeks help if they need it, that the stigma is slowly getting torn down and what everyone wants is to have a long career and be healthy mentally doing these jobs.”

What Happens After the Sirens Stop? For Hammond, understanding the effects of emergency service work means understanding that the impact doesn't necessarily end when a shift does.

Sometimes it follows responders home….Sometimes it stays for years…And sometimes it resurfaces unexpectedly.

Hammond knows this from personal experience. Over the course of his career, certain sights, sounds, smells and even weather can bring memories rushing back. “Between 15 and 18 I saw a lot of death from auto accidents and fire and EMS work,” he recalls. “There’s certain weather that brings back calls, certain smells, things like that.”

His work as a coroner has provided another, very different perspective. “The coroner side is totally different perspective,” Hammond says. “You remember a lot more than EMS because you deal with the families so much more.”

Those relationships leave an imprint. “So you remember houses you have walked into, families you have taken care of, things like that,” he says.

It is precisely these experiences that make Hammond's book so personal. This isn't a subject he researched from a distance. It is a subject he has lived.

After completing his first book, Hammond realized there was another audience that needed to be part of the conversation: the families waiting at home.

That realization led him to write a second book, one focused on the people who love responders and often struggle to understand what happens to them after years of emergency service.

Why does someone come home irritable after a shift? Why can a responder be completely exhausted even when they didn't handle many calls? Why can someone who thrives amid chaos struggle when everything becomes quiet? And what happens when the career that has defined a person's life begins to come to an end?

Hammond's second book explores those questions and offers families a window into the responder's world. “Responders spend their whole life taking care of people but have no idea how to take care of themselves,” Hammond says.

He hopes the book helps families understand that the changes they see aren't necessarily personal failures or signs that something is wrong with the person they love. “It also gets into helping cope with retirement coming up and how to plan,” he explains. “So hopefully it will help families understand why things happen and why responders do great during chaos but have a really hard time dealing with silence or normal situations.”

For families who have spent years watching someone rush toward emergencies, the transition back into ordinary life can be just as complicated as the emergencies themselves. 

For all the research, writing and organization that went into the project, Hammond says the most difficult part wasn't putting words on a page. It was being honest with himself. “The most challenging part is writing ideas, and truly digging deep into myself to put my thoughts on paper,” he says. “That made me really take a look at myself and my mental health at times.”

That self-examination became one of the unexpected gifts of writing. “Everyone really needs to do that and be honest with themselves,” Hammond says.

In fact, the writing process surprised him. “Once I started writing it it flowed easily compared to what I thought it would be like,” he recalls. “It was truly like opening up my life for once and writing it all out.”

The first book took months—perhaps more than a year—to assemble, research and refine.

The second came together much faster. “I did it at night mainly when I had time over a two-week period and I would have to finally go to bed and turn my mind off,” Hammond says.

That sense of urgency reflects how much the subject had been building inside him for years.

Although this is Hammond's first published book, writing isn't an entirely new pursuit for him. He has also been working on a book about death investigation and how to operate a small- to medium-sized coroner's office.

`When Hammond became involved in the coroner's office, he discovered there weren't many straightforward, step-by-step guides available for investigators. “There were no step-by-step guides and in turn it was trial and error a lot of times,” he explains.

His answer was to create the resource he wished had existed. “I wanted to give investigators something that is now easier,” he says. “It has today’s standards so hopefully it helps someone.”

That desire—to make the road easier for the person coming behind him—may be one of the strongest threads running through all of Hammond's writing.

Whether he is addressing mental health, family relationships or death investigation, his motivation is remarkably consistent: take what experience has taught him and use it to help somebody else.

  Hammond's connection to the region also gives his writing a distinctive perspective. Born and raised in Louisa, Kentucky, he moved to Boyd County in 1990 after graduating from Eastern Kentucky University. His career has since taken him throughout the state, exposing him to communities with very different characteristics.

“I think traveling the state gives me many perspectives on how and what influenced me,” he says, “especially starting out in a rural area and then working in a more populated area gives different perspectives.”

There are local people, places and experiences woven into the story as well, although Hammond is intentionally keeping some of those details private. “They are and honestly I won’t give a lot of that away because that is so personal I think in this field,” he says.

For Hammond, being a local author isn't necessarily about recognition. “I have not given it much thought,” he says. “I just hope it helps people in some way.” That modest answer may say as much about Hammond as anything else.

After decades spent responding to other people's worst days, he isn't writing for accolades. He's writing because he believes the next responder should have the opportunity to have a healthier, longer career—and because the families who stand beside those responders deserve to understand them.

Perhaps the most personal discovery Hammond made through writing was learning to be more open about his own thoughts and feelings. “It has taught me to be real about my thoughts and feelings,” he says.

For someone who has spent much of his life in environments where strength is expected that realization carries particular weight. “A lot of people say I am mentally the strongest person they know,” Hammond says. “And maybe I am only because I finally learned how to cope in positive ways with my mental health.”

That honesty extends to the book itself. “The introductions or about myself I really got personal about myself and I have never did that or had to do that until now,” he says.

For readers, that may be one of the most unexpected aspects of Hammond's work. Behind the professional experience and decades of service is a person willing to acknowledge that even the strongest people can struggle—and that asking for help doesn't diminish strength.

Instead, it may be part of what makes strength possible. If Hammond's first books are any indication, his writing career is only beginning.

He has several ideas he wants to pursue on the death-investigation side. He is considering a biography that would draw from 42 years of experiences and stories. And he is even contemplating fiction. “Fiction to protect people involved but real things that have occurred,” he says. There is certainly no shortage of material.

Forty-two years in emergency services have given Hammond a lifetime of stories—stories about tragedy, resilience, families, responders, death, survival and the complicated human beings behind every emergency call.

But perhaps the most important story he is telling now is one about what happens after the call. The flashing lights disappear. The radio goes quiet. The uniform comes off. The responder goes home. And that's when another kind of work can begin.

Hammond's new book is an invitation to have that conversation—to acknowledge the weight carried by those who spend their lives carrying others, to remind responders that they are not alone, and to give families a better understanding of the people they love.

After 42 years of answering calls, Mark Hammond is answering a different one now: the call to make sure those who serve others don't forget to take care of themselves.