As recently as a few weeks ago, Jim Carr had talked about getting back to work, riding on the fire engines again after being sick at home for more than a year.

“Jim always hoped in his heart of hearts that he would come back to work,” said Ed Noonen, a firefighter with Lawrence-Douglas County Fire & Medical who came to the department the same year as Carr.

After all, Carr had every intention of paying back all the men and women who had worked his shifts while he was battling cancer so that he could still get a paycheck and keep his benefits, Noonen said.

Carr always put others before himself, friends and co-workers said, so it was just a natural reaction when Carr got his diagnosis in September 2001 that they would pull together and help him and his family any way they could.

“He was so thoughtful,” said Kathy Elkins, president of the International Association of Firefighters Local No. 1596, to which Carr belonged. “He would do anything in the world for anyone.”

Carr died of cancer on Friday at the age of 41.

As a final gesture of gratitude to their fallen brother, local firefighters on Tuesday will drive Carr’s casket to the cemetery aboard Engine No. 6, the truck on which he started his career with the department in 1990.

“Jim was a firefighter through and through,” Elkins said. “He just loved the tradition of a fire department, and so that’s one of the traditions that we wanted for him.

“Normally we carry four people on a crew. This time, there will be three people, and he will be the fourth.”

Throughout his illness, Carr had used laughter to ease the sadness of his friends and family, Elkins said.

“Even when he was in the hospital, he was cracking jokes to make us feel better,” she said.

Other co-workers also recalled funny moments shared with Carr.

“This is a Jayhawk town, and Jim was a K-Stater,” Capt. Phil Kuhnert said. “He got harassed unmercifully. In the bunk room, he had to have a huge K-State blanket. He heard about it every day.”

Carr was a skilled construction worker and often did remodeling projects in his own home. Shortly after he became sick last year  when he was too weak to paint his house as he’d intended  dozens of his friends from the department surprised him by painting his entire home in one afternoon.

“I just think that’s something that you earn, to have that type of commitment from your fellow firefighters,” Chief Jim McSwain said. “He’s been a loyal, dedicated, hard-working firefighter. “

Carr was chosen Firefighter of the Year in 2000 by the local union and received the Fraternal Order of Eagles Firefighter Award in 1997.

“He was a very special individual,” Kuhnert said.