Waynesburg-Franklin firefighters celebrate 90 years
Waynesburg-Franklin fire Chief Jeff Marshall stands with the fire company’s vintage fire truck.
Waynesburg-Franklin firefighters extinguish a kitchen fire at this Waynesburg home in 2012.
A fire destroyed four buildings, including the three-story Downey House Hotel, in Waynesburg Dec. 23, 1925. Five people were killed, which led to the organization of Waynesburg-Franklin Township Fire Company in March 1926. The fire company is celebrating its 90th anniversary this week.
Waynesburg-Franklin Township Fire Company, which was organized following the tragic Downey House Hotel fire in December 1925, is celebrating 90 years of putting out fires, rescuing crash victims and saving lives.
The department’s 50 volunteers will celebrate the milestone Saturday night during an invitation-only banquet at Benedum Dining Hall at Waynesburg University with a social time to follow at the Waynesburg Moose Lodge.
“We’re really proud of what we do and we hope the community is proud too,” fire Chief Jeff Marshall said.
The company has six fire trucks and three pick-up trucks in service between the Waynesburg and Franklin Township stations. They cover 110 square miles, respond to 240 emergency calls per year and train more than 350 hours per year.
But the company didn’t start out that big.
The fire company was birthed in tragedy when a Waynesburg fire destroyed four buildings, including the three-story Downey House Hotel at High and Washington streets on Dec. 23, 1925.
“A wall fell and killed five people,” Marshall said. “They called it the Christmas Eve tragedy.”
Harvey Call, William Finch, Thurman Long, Joseph Rifenburg, and Victor Silveus died.
“If there had been indifference as to the need of a volunteer fire department in Waynesburg before the fire, it vanished completely in the shock waves of death and destruction, which paralyzed the entire community for weeks after this holocaust,” the company’s website states.
Less than three months later, on March 4, 1926, the borough established the Waynesburg Fire Company.
“It started with about 20 charter members,” Marshall said.
By May of that year, they purchased their first fire truck, a 1925 American LaFrance Pumper, and Marshall D. Wood was the first fire chief. Years later, they began collecting a fire tax.
“We still have the first truck,” Marshall said. “We have it for display and use it in parades.”
Marshall said in 1989 the company opened the Franklin Township station with two trucks and added a fire tax in the township.
Ron Fox, president of the company for the past six years, said he’s been with the department for 40 years and things have changed since he started.
“Our equipment and vehicles we use have changed a lot as well as the techniques and the types of calls we respond to,” he said. “The only thing that has remained constant is the quality of the volunteers we get. We have a lot of great people help out.”
Some of those volunteers include Fox’s three brothers Dave, Mark and Tim, who also co-own the Fox Ford dealership in Waynesburg. Their father, Bob, and grandfather Ollie also volunteered with the station back in their day, and now a younger generation of the Fox’s son and nephews are stepping in as volunteers.
“It’s just kind of a family thing,” Ron Fox said.
He said some of the calls he’ll remember the most were fatal structure fires, like the 2007 fire on Valley Farm Drive fire in Franklin Township that killed six children and one adult. He also mentioned the 2010 North Richhill Street fire that killed two children.
“Anytime there are kids involved, those are the ones that are always the worst,” he said.
Fox said the success of the fire company is due to support from the community, local businesses and volunteers.
“Without those guys none of this ever would have happened,” he said.
That’s why this year’s banquet theme will be about the company’s partners in the community, Marshall said. He said many of the volunteers count on their employers to let them leave during work hours if they get paged to a fire or emergency call.
“That’s who we’d like to thank because without them we wouldn’t be able to do this,” he said.