Histories by Buffs Enhance Local Fire Service Image
features
Staff Correspondent
We’ve called attention several times to the ways in which fire buffs help enhance the “image” of their local fire service by reminding citizens of the history of that service. Highlighting the role fire fighters have played in community development focuses favorable public attention on the fire department. To many private citizens, and often to legislators making budgetary decisions, public protection is a taken-for-granted drain of taxpayers’ money. A knowledge of a vital, colorful past history, based on common needs of all the people, can change that stereotype.
A growing trend over the past 20 years has been the publication by buffs, or with their help, of authoritative and well-illustrated books setting down (often for the first time) the entire past history of a fire department. Latest of these to be announced, for appearance late in 1980, is “Mill City Firefighters—The First Hundred Years.” Written by buff Richard Heaty, of the Extra Alarm Association of the Twin Cities, this 160-page hardbound volume is the story of the Minneapolis Fire Department from 1879 through 1979 (including a summary of the volunteer days 1854-1879).
Besides 200 photos—some in color—of fires, apparatus, and stations, it will contain pictures of all current department members; an honor roll of lineof-duty deaths; apparatus rosters; and individual company histories. (Contact the Association of 1801 W. 59th St., Minneapolis 55419, for further details.)
Fire department histories
During the past decade, similar histories have appeared in Baltimore; Milwaukee; Vancouver, B.C.; Jackson, Mich.; Springfield, Ohio; Waltham and Lexington, Mass.; Albany and Jamestown, N.Y. Some have gone into second or third printings totaling 5000 or more copies.
Through book reviews, TV author interviews, or newspaper serialization, these publications reach a wide local audience. Mention in such internationally known fire buff publications as the annual “Visiting Fireman” directory, or the quarterly SPAAMFAA newsletter, introduces the material to readers throughout the country.
Such works are not “potboilers,” hastily thrown together from meager sources as an advertising or fund-raising scheme. They are usually labors of love, painstakingly assembled over many years with the sole object of preserving what would otherwise be lost. At least one book received a special award from the local historical society.
Buffs get involved several ways in these ventures. First, they collect the reference data without which books cannot be written. Fire departments themselves seldom have the manpower, the money, or (unfortunately) the inclination, to maintain historical records—particularly photographic. The detailed scrapbook, put together and even indexed year by year with loving care, isn’t usually found in the average chiefs office. Few departments use photography except for investigative work, and only in recent years have any had their own official photographers. Excellent newspictures of fire and rescue operations have, however, been available for many years—to the buff whose hobby was to collect such items as they appeared.
Records preserved
Even the day-to-day records, such as logs of greater-alarm responses, may be discarded after several years to make room for the ever-growing mass of new paperwork. Years ago, one dedicated buff, poking through a small shed behind an abandoned firehouse, discovered a quarter-century’s moldering company journals. The information in those books helped fill in the forgotten history of municipal fire protection.
One of the toughest, but most important, tasks of the historian is to dig up the anecdotes of the old-timers who alone can tell it like it really was. In gathering one city’s fire service history for publication, a team of buffs spent most of a year going through the department’s pension rolls, contacting survivors who could recall the past, then recording and editing their conversations.
A second way in which the buffing fraternity helps put these stories together is by preparing the written text itself, as Heath has done in Minneapolis. A third way is by doing the tedious, exacting and sometimes costly task of publication—page makeup, photo selection, proofreading, etc. Or a buff group may be able to find a printing firm willing to do the job, once the author has done his work, as was in the case in San Jose, Calif., with the only fire department history in the western United States.
