Volunteer Fire Department - Dave’s Midwestern Ohio Memories

Blog about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s.

Volunteer Fire Department

After I participated in a recent meeting of the Tri-City Fire Commission, a fire consortium here in Michigan among several local communities including the city of Orchard Lake where I live, the Fire Chief was reminiscing about the most serous fires he had to fight over his career. So naturally, on my way home, I started thinking about major fires that occurred as a kid growing up. The Ft. Loramie Community Fire Department, pictured above in this 1964 photo, was a department of dedicated volunteers who took the job very seriously. Most were local proprietors around town who were available on a moments notice should the fire alarm sound. Chief Morrie Frey was the local barber and his shop and home was directly across the street from the Fire Department. So he was like a full time firefighter on call 24-7. He would take the fire truck out to the fires and the other volunteers would follow in their vehicles, many red pick-up trucks with magnetic flashing red lights that could mounted to the top of the truck during a run.

Probably the most memorable fire as a kid was Ray Hoying’s barn fire around 1960. He was the neighbor to my grandparents in St. Patrick’s, so when visiting, we would play in that big barn with his children, who were second cousins. The fire started around dusk and from our farm about 10 miles away, we could see the flames and smoke shooting in the air. Dad knew the direction of the flames were about where his in-laws farm was, so the family took a ride to the fire. When we got there, the barn was totally ablaze pretty much as depicted in the photo on the right. That’s as close as we could get because of all the fire apparatus and other gawkers like us. However, we were thankful no one was hurt and that it wasn’t our grandparents barn that was on fire. I recall the first responders had gotten the livestock out of the barn, but that several cows ran back into the burning barn sensing they were in danger and instinctively returning to the only “safe” place they knew, the barn.

Once the fire was out, the barn was eventually rebuilt, with lots of help from the locals including Dad, who participated in one of the last barn raisings of that era.

Another serious fire that occurred after I left home was the factory fire of the Francis-Schulze company between Newport and Russia on Range Line Rd. The company was owned and operated by my in-laws, so upon the word of the fire, we left our home in Michigan to help the family recover from the disaster shown in the photos below. First order of business was getting production started again in what was an adjacent warehouse not damaged by the fire, which meant moving and repairing some fire-damage equipment literally on the fly while procuring and transporting new or used equipment and production parts in an expedited manner, and organizing the workforce to man the transformed operation around the clock to make up for lost production. Bottom line, the company never missed an order and they kept the pipeline flowing to their customers while the factory was rebuilt, this time with a sprinkler system fed from a large diesel pump adjacent to a much bigger retention pond behind the plant. My wife’s sister Joan tells the following story about that day, "Still amazes me looking back at these pictures and story how the Francis-Schulze sign (shown in the second photo), made of pressed board ever survived! Firemen all said a miracle! We took it as a sign from above; not to give up and build again! That sign still hangs today in the factory for all to see as a reminder to never give up."

Well, those memories came home to roost with me in 2002 when I was asked as an elected council member in the City of Orchard Lake to represent the city on the aforementioned Tri-City Fire Commission. After being on the Board of the volunteer fire department for less than a year, the Fire Chief suddenly announced his retirement, so we used that opportunity to investigate merging with the full time fire and EMS department of the neighboring township. A committee was formed that included me to work out the details, which we were able to accomplish in short order. The Township needed a new station, so they took over operation of our exiting almost-new station and truck pictured below.

The merger allowed the township to avoid the cost to build or buy new; meanwhile our citizens starting receiving fire and EMS services on a full time basis, cutting response times from 10 minutes to less than 4 minutes. Plus the firefighters were trained and licensed paramedics who could administer medications in route to the hospital rather than our volunteers who were trained as medical first responders who could only monitor the condition of the patient at the scene and while in route. Because we saved the cost of hiring a new chief and incurred lower fees from the township for the use of our station, the net cost was essentially a wash, which meant no tax increase for the better services. After the merger was consummated, the Fire Board was given the opportunity to participate in Fire Ops 101 training with new firefighters to learn firsthand the nuances of fire and EMS services. It was an amazing experience; in fact they gave each of us a fire helmet pictured below to keep along with the group photo in front of a burning tanker we had to extinguish during the training. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to talk to several people who thanked me profusely claiming they would not be alive had we not made the conversion to full time fire and EMS services.

Back to those dedicated firefighters in the Ft. Loramie Fire Department. They somehow inspired me much later in life to get involved in the firefighting services as described above, for which I'm eternally grateful. They must have influenced my brother as well since he was a volunteer on Russia’s fire department when he was living there. No doubt the firefighters in the 1926 photo below of the members of the Ft. Loramie department and their horse-drawn fire engines in front of the school, almost two years before the first motorized fire truck was purchased, inspired the group of dedicated volunteers on the department I knew growing up. And those guys surely have passed on a similar dedication to today’s crew serving the department pictured below in front of St. Michael’s.