For more than 60 years, firefighters have teamed with MDA to fight back against muscular dystrophy, ALS and related life-threatening diseases.

For one firefighter, the cause became very personal when his son, Chandler Mallen, was diagnosed with juvenile dermatomyositis, a neuromuscular disease that involves inflammation of the muscles. When Chandler asked his father — Scott, a firefighter who has collected donations for MDA’s Fill the Boot program for almost 25 years — if he’d lose the use of his legs, he didn’t wait for an answer.

“Even if I do,” Chandler said, “I’ll never stop trying.”