Mayor now says Bristol firefighters can wear pink

BRISTOL, Conn. (WTNH) -- The Mayor has changed his stance and is now allowing firefighters to wear pink for breast cancer awareness.

Professional football players wore pink for breast cancer awareness on Sunday. Even many at News 8 wore pink last week.

Around the state, firefighters are buying and wearing pink t-shirts to raise money for breast cancer research.

In Bristol, Mayor Art Ward told firefighters they could sell the shirts as a fundraiser, but they could not wear pink while on duty. He has now changed his mind about.

"I am going to allow the wearing of the pink breast awareness cancer t-shirts," said Mayor Art Ward.

Mayor Ward originally said that if he said yes to pink for breast cancer, then he'd have to say yes to uniform changes for every worthy cause. That rejection caused a national outcry.

Mayor Ward said the controversy was becoming bigger than the cause, and he didn't want that to happen because he himself lost loved ones to breast cancer.

"Reflecting back on my own personal experiences with my mom being a victim of cancer and other family members, I feel that we can't let that prevail," he said.

There's one unintended benefit to the controversy. There's been so much publicity that those pink t-shirts are now a hot commodity. In fact, at the firehouse they're all sold out and they had to order more.

"We're approaching or probably past the 500 number and we anticipate that to improve dramatically," said Sean Lennon, Bristol Firefighters Union President.

The Mayor is opening all Bristol's firehouses for t-shirt sales on Sunday, October 28th. The Mayor says the city has to figure out how to handle any future requests for uniform changes.