going williams ok so we've got all three of the volunteer fire departments represented tonight and joe waters is going to be giving a little talk later on was with so i'd like to also thank our co sponsor ramsey county libraries and especially for their use of the conference room this evening i also want to mention that we are funded by a grant from minnesota arts and cultural heritage fun which is also known as the legacy amendment act we are going back in time not that many years but certainly before electronics if you have a cell phone p d a pager whatever please turn it off and or silence it our main speaker tonight is going to be kate cabot but before i introduce her she has asked that i give a little brief history of the maplewood volunteer fire departments and actually most of you could probably give a better history than me so before maplewood became a city we were new canada township and fire protection came both from st paul and from our st paul when early example in november eight hundred ninety two when the st paul plough works in gladstone started on fire they call for assistance from st paul they put a fire engine on a flat car and then use the notice that they could no longer provide fire service to the township primarily because of limited manpower during world war two st paul had another problem though is that they were set up to obtain fire in the water from fire hydrants and in gladstone actually  whole town shipped the only fourteen hydrants on two of the streets in gladstone so st paul did not have tanker trucks in order to carry water out to the rural areas another criticism from some of the township residents is that neither st paul or nor st paul really knew the township very well and frequently became lost while trying to find a fire so perhaps it was best that the volunteer fire departments to get started gladstone was the first one to get fully organized they had a meeting in december of forty two maplewood to the historical society and i'm proud to say that we have it on display at our museum which is the brutal pair teach farm and county road be in the back of the room we have some flyers about the different open houses will have through the summer  first meeting was held to discuss options to continue to pay city of little canada for fire service in that western part of maplewood they did go ahead and set a phone to your fire department they had a fundraiser to raise the three hundred dollars as a down payment for their first truck which was a nine hundred thirty seven pumper truck that they purchased from gladstone fire so these three volunteer departments along with the five stations provided service to all of maplewood until january first  ninety seven when they merged become a city on fire department now at the historical society we've been collecting written histories photos documents and i've talked to several you about different documents that we have that you might that we have photographs of  of many of the people but one of the things that we're lacking are the personal stories from the firefighters in especially those that were violent volunteer firefighters so in two thousand and thirteen we obtained a grant to hire a professional oral historian to record as many of those stories as we could and this is where kate cabot comes into the picture kate has had previous experience doing oral interviews on the residents living in the rondeau area of st paul before it was lost to interstate ninety four freeway and those interviews have been summarized in a book voices of rondell and they're also a basis for an exhibit at minnesota history center which is still very active more recently kate has completed more than fifty oral interviews of policeman for the st paul police department so she certainly has the credentials to do a good job of interviewing so i like to give a warm welcome to kate ca the maplewood area historical society is a model for all other historical societies in the area they are the level of the work that they do the amount of historic preservation and the cutting edge technology that they use is far and above most of the other small historical societies in and around minnesota so you've got a real a real what i'm going to do is talk just a little bit about about oral history kind of lay the foundation about why oral history is an important method or important medium in preserving history when we think about history we think about public history or we think about family organizational history and public history as an organized effort to bring accurate meaningful history to a public audience usually determine through public documents so public history might be what's written in the newspaper it could be financial reports it could be lists of who the officers were it could be minutes from meetings  very boring stuff in my estimation family history and hopefully you all have thought about preserving some of your family history it's an organized effort to preserve personal stories for the family audience you know probably the neighbors next door might not be as interested in your family history but it's really important for your children and grandchildren family history don't necessarily need historical collaboration's because you know as we remember thinks are memories get power waste is they sift through time one person remembers it this way another person remembers it that way and it isn't about always having to prove it it's just understanding that memories are going to be different that's ok all history i think is the most powerful tool in preserving family and organizational histories but also oral history adds the human story to the public history public documents you know they don't tell about the heart they don't tell about the work they don't tell about the sacrifices they give data and it's important but oral history rounds out the history dr lehman says in telling stories we're telling each other the human stories stories the touch us in this place of common humanness awaken us and weave us together as a family once again and if there is something that i learned from this particular project is that each of the volunteer fire departments were very very rich families and like all families sometimes there was conflict sometimes there was different opinions and when it came down to it they all worked very hard to keep the citizens save and they were totally dedicated to the citizens in the maplewood area as bob has said this project is a project of the maplewood historic area historical society  e and you and your chairs there's a definition along definition of oral history which you can take home and read the short definition of oral history is it's the history recorded in the words of those who lived it now the difference between oral history and a memoir or a biography is oral history is preserved in the words of the storyteller when i was working on history project a very well known and leader in minneapolis came out with a book and he had hired someone to write the book and he had told the stories and someone else wrote the book and several people commented to me that well the pope was cut it was well published had a lot of good pictures it was published it was very well produced but it didn't sound like him and what i love about oral histories is if you read an oral history or if you listen to an audio book or if you watch a video if you know the person who is sharing their oral history it's going to sound like  oral history sounds like dick juke or it doesn't sound like bob johnson to bob could have taken the stories and he could have really given them to us but an oral history keeps that person alive in the tone in the tempo of their speech oral histories support of writing things like bob mentioned the round oral histories at the base of a display at the minnesota historical society movies hadn't have been created from oral histories radio documentaries community histories and we're going to have an example of how oral history is used in one of the display i think this is going to be part of the display at the minnesota historical this little video short the fire that i'm most often asked about is jim department store fire where that we have any photos videos or any knowledge of one of the thing in researching a historic topic we've got both photos and text in here is the number of people that have different impressions and i know there's at least three things in here that some people will disagree with me on one of the most dramatic fires in maplewood was the jam department store fire on monday august twenty eighth one thousand nine hundred sixty seven the gem star was located in the southeast corner of highway sixty one and thirty six it had opened in october  two at a cost of one and a half million dollars this was twelve years before the maplewood mall opened and one hundred thirty thousand square feet of floor space made it one of the largest merchandisers in the twin cities area the maplewood gem store was the twenty six to open since jim was founded in one nine hundred fifty six and joined another minnesota gem store in bloomington that opened in one nine hundred fifty eight the fire is believed to have started in the paint section of the house where his department about four thirty in the afternoon the flames were reported to be as high as the ceiling within fifteen seconds it then spread rapidly between the rough in the fall ceiling but the one hundred employees were able to evacuate safely ten volunteer fire departments responded and gladstone fire was the first to arrive chief shade was in charge of the firefighters and said the flames were already through the rough when the first rigs arrived the firefighters tried to cut off the fire in the middle of a block long one story building by going in the front entrance but flames had already spread throughout the building in the rough collapsed within forty minutes none of the volunteer fire departments had a snorkel truck that would allow firefighters to be above the fire to direct water on burning section as of the rough dick peterson was with carried in with tanker trucks the traffic on highway sixty one was also blocked so fire hoses could be run across the highway from fire trucks pumping water from keller lake that was about four blocks from the store many residents remember the fire because of the of black smoke that could be seen for miles as the merchandise that included paint and tires smoldered beneath the collapsed rough commuters also remember that the lays caused by the closure of highway sixty one during rush hour the slow down along highway thirty six the fire continued to burn through the night and into the next day it was not until five pm on tuesday that firefighters stop pouring water on the blaze the store was declared a total loss at two million dollars and gem the nation's largest discount store chain at that time decided not to rebuild gem was created as a discount membership store for government and nonprofit employees it was one of the first memberships stores in this area the chairman of the board robert wolfson said the principle of this limited membership was to provide only merchandise that appeal to a certain range of incomes there was no sprinkler system in the store and merchandise was piled nearly to the ceiling because of this fire the city of maplewood rewrote city ordinances to ensure sprinklers were in all newly constructed commercial buildings also maplewood purchased its first snorkel truck that provided firefighters with an aerial view not just a way of passing time it's the way the wisdom gets passed along that stuff that helps us to live a life worth remembering i do oral histories a lot and i think part of my mission in doing oral histories is encouraging family members older family members you know if you're over twenty five year old or to be sure and tell the failing stories to the younger generations and they may not appear to be listening but it still is important to tell the stories to pass that wisdom along some of the specifics about this maplewood volunteer fire department oral history project as we've talked about there are the three different departments that were in maplewood and the city of maplewood has a very unique configuration and so you had to have the three departments if you were going to be able to address fires in the area because you had to live within a certain distance of from the different departments when we started the project most of the background information that was available to us was from gladstone and so we did start with the gladstone fire department we did we've done oral histories for firefighter richard jupiter for chief dick peterson for chief steve luke and for district chief joe watters we did oral histories for chief ed lear and can captain amy shed dorman one of the stories that tells in her oral history is she was a little girl and i'm not sure maybe five or six or something like that and the gemstone fire was on her birthday and so the family went and brought her to the fire so that she could see her dad as a dad wasn't going to be able to get to the birthday party so the birthday party had to be be postponed it was very much a family affair when there were you know when fires were going to interfere with lives and trees county line we interviewed chief beating so i had the opportunity to go out in talk to people when i'm going to do an oral history i like to meet someone ahead of time let them get a feel for my energy and decide if you know they think they can talk to me or not and i was in awe cheve beatty's memory and details about the administration of east county line this project his bob has said was funded by the minnesota historical cultural heritage grants and the history there are five six different areas that history projects can find one of them is oral histories and the reason we were able to get funding for this particular project was because it was for public safety it's one of the areas that they fund they they say in their grant guidelines that they do not fund interviewing older people only from their random memories going but i love my random memories but they do fund public safety so we were able to get this grant some of the questions that we explored in the interviews are how did you how did being a firefighter influence the rest of your life because one of the things i heard over and over again was being a fighter firefighter was oftentimes the  centerpiece of their lives and people walked out of holiday dinners people were not able to spend as much time with their family because of all of the demands of being a firefighter how did being a fight being on the fire department affect your family a lot how did the fire department influence the community other than fire protection and that clearly i mean those  er fire departments my allusion is that it created very strong roots in maplewood and describe suburban community life there is a new display coming to the minnesota historical society i think next year and suburbia and having lived in the same paul for the last twenty five years and just having moved to egan suburbia is very different things than city life so you know it those are all important things to look at and that you get to answer in oral histories what we created with the documents were primary documents and history type things it's the primary library for the colony but we also convinced them to have copies here and then of course the maplewood area historical society has copies of all of them and you can go on their web page and the documents are on the web page and you can read them on the web page in the oral history some of the things that we explored with our interviewees were the major fires the workhouse in as many pictures as i can find in an oral history there are maps in the oral histories so the jew crews were fabulous in they kept a lot of artifacts you know what you have down there that you can't really see is the call it's the early colace you know nowadays it's like oh ok well give somebody a pager well they didn't have pagers back in the forty's they had a call a stiffer fire came in you know you called one person and they called two people they called two people and we actually have in dick's oral history one of the early colace people would reference things that i had no idea what you know first time i heard about turned out here i'm gone so what we did in the arl histories is we would attempt to put a description or a picture of what they're talking about for me when i'm reading other oral histories and somebody references something that i don't know what it is i either put the history down and i have to go reference it or i get distracted trying to figure out what it is michel always in doing oral histories is that in fifty years in eighth grader can read the oral history and hopefully they're going to have enough extra information in it that they're going to find it interesting and they're not going to have too many questions so when you talk about a hard suction hose we've got a picture of that in the oral history or a standpipe we have a picture of that or writing the tale boards those of you that were firefighters how many of you row the tail boards so incredibly dangerous in the oral histories we also have footnotes if somebody references taking a firefighter one or two we have a footnote on that somebody talks about going to nine sixteen hotel which then became like white community college which then became century college we have a footnote referencing that they talk about e m t we have a footnote about emergency medical technicians and the qualifications of what it takes the schooling it takes to to get there and then there are just some fun artifacts that came up dick peterson talked about the politics between my favorite city st paul and maplewood and i love this cartoon let's just agree that you'll help me when i need it and i'll do the same for you big fire truck little fire truck this is the fun stuff of the departments incredible amount of work that bob jensen dead in creating these and of course they are there fluid documents because as more information comes in they will need to be added to and in the back of each of the oral histories we have indexes so if you look at all history and if you want to talk while didn't talk about the gem fire you can look there on the index and see if it was talked about as i've reference one of the things that was a consistent theme through all of the oral histories was the love of community and the absolute commitment to the citizens of the maplewood area district chief joe watters served the maplewood area and as a firefighter from one nine hundred eighty till two thousand and seven he came on at eighteen years of age and worked apartments mrs smith the real mrs smith knew that they lived down the street from us so every time the siren to go off let myself and my brother when he was in town we go right on fire station watch a fire trucks go so was just one of those life long things you has a big house by a three m scientist that actually sat on the lake and i think it was coming home and i could see the flames from about i got to the top of kindness and you could see the flames i went home change shoes change clothes went back to the fire station jumped on the engines and went over there by the time i got there i think it was like one wall still stands for two walls standing but it was a completely  fully charged you need about six people because you can easily lose control if you ever think that this job would be dangerous when you started it no seriously it did ok i did it did not again i was just happy to be there you know i wasn't thinking about the risks you show me one thousand dollars really thinking about this but if you really look at your place on the drive under eighteen years old so no i wasn't thinking about the risks at the time and what point did you realize that this was a very dangerous heard the argument in the irshad that's when they sent the police over there and then we were sent in on the on the on the medical we arrived on the scene one of the paramedics is now retired district chief was already were when the patient has her com and one of the cops big cop brings a guy handcuffed out of the house this person is one of the shooters hiding in the basement and we're kind of sydney and it's going like we could have been working on this guy and he could've came up and shot all place our station hazlewood station was second to station so we have five firefighters five yellow hats and all that works as yellow had is a firefighter red hat as a captain in a white hat is a chief so if you hear her to that you kind of get an idea so we're rolling out the door in our yellow pumper with five yellow hats park said rolls up with their red truck with five white listens and yeah he was in the bathroom one of the senior captain said live down the street from me says i think this is good when the water should go didn't know it at the time i just hopped in the embers but the my coat got there the guy was in the bathroom all had feces all over the kind of a lesson quick lesson that i learned that you know not everybody is happy to see brother going up in suburbia so we just considered we were one of the guys you know we didn't look at you know one person being black the other person being white so i just consider myself one of the guys yeah there were some that resented me but they didn't say anything but i just i just didn't really pay much attention at that time i just focused on what i need to do it in like the i just kind of done those that did like the weekend on your own so i really did that time you know i really didn't look at you know i really knew male among a lot of attention to what i liked about working in this area of the so diverse it wasn't just all residential it was commercial it was industrial you know it was medical facilities because i remember going to meeting with st johns said they were going to move up to mabel and we went to you know a kind of an open house near explaining what their goals were for the campus but some of the most interesting medicals you know one particular case and it happened in these kind of winery i was going home because my brother was on the skyline at the time and i was going home a different way and from my head to the left and i saw a bicycle bicyclist young kid on the ground and i thought that's kind of nuts and what to check it out come to found he just got hit by a car and no one had made the call to nine one one yet your hands and like this that's a serious serious brain the brain injury and he started doing that and went into kind of a quick panic mode like where the medics they better get their tail here fast so then someone else pull up and i looked in and i said tell brain injury but he didn't do too bad but we basically got to blow it it was a team effort got him loaded down the regions in a matter of ten minutes ten minutes and i think to put it to him in the surgery but he did paramedic and that relationship with maple wood fire it was kind of wacky rocky relationship because you know you have police officers that have certain powers but you know they kind of work together you're pretty much for s to the paramedic but there were times when you kind of question what the paramedic was doing but you just kind of kept it to yourself so there was always that you know that kind of a love hate relationship that existed because maplewood had a very unique situation where their police officer is some of their police officers were trained as paramedics and there the police paramedic which is i don't think other communities picked up on there's only two of there's only two other communities and picked up on understanding what he said to his police officers you have a choice if we cross train as a firefighter during the cross train as a paramedic kind of fifty fifty and they've been in that system it's been in the police let's say for about the last ten fifteen years know you just did you guys used to talking using certain words and suddenly you had to kind of coach yourself or refrain from saying certain things because it could be interpreted the wrong way oh most of th we just can't be by this to give this away and he just was almost like to just cut it off but the kind of you know eased it on out the door first to put in the vending machine and eventually just got rid of it all together what happened i think and all of the different departments about the same time and there were never did you ever have somebody go on a call where yes i had a couple people that had a few beers that i was on right track with that i did not feel comfortable with but again being a junior guy just kind of go with the flow so it affects i mean nowadays i don't think you know i was like oh my gosh you wouldn't do that but different times in different areas you know you have to judge what went on in the sixty's you can't judge a player standards today and you know looking at the evolution of changes is one of the fascinating things about history and you know you had guys dropping left and right because your fright your it's already a super heated muggy day to begin with a hot august day when you're going into the super heated atmosphere trying to put out fires and people coming on they're dropping like flies the guy did have swimming pool you know you still have that i think time it was a fire or two in the morning and we were on it would be on the west side of the house in the house because not lit up there was you know obviously the power was out because the lines are dropping but we did not put in the lights the back of the house and i had one of the senior chiefs come up behind you say got to get closer you got to get closer and i'm thinking ok i hear a power line kind of sparking over this way and i can't see it again you're pushing me to get closer closer to this house let's get the back of this house lit up so we can find his power line so no one gets electrocuted so that was that was billy about the only sad situation i can think of offhand do you ever get overheated yes the number of times at one time was a small house fire in station service officer paramedics grabbed me and said sit down and drink this there was some gatorade because apparently it wasn't looking too i wasn't looking that well i'm going to feel fine she goes just sit up and drink this well i'm not going to argue with that how hard it is is it to be focused on doing it job and not in touch with how you feel your own physical health is it really is what you get when you know for me it's like once you get started on something you want to come you want to accomplish the task and just focused on getting that task done whether it be opening up a wall battling a wall looking for hidden fire putting water on the fire getting a person out of harm's way and you just focused on the task and you really kind of not worr to worry about your own health so it's very easy to lose sight of that situational where's the call today what was one of the first aside rank assignments that you w position called the tenet safety officer was kind of created you know i'd been there fourteen years it was kind of created the idea was to you know really kind of watch out for the troops on the fire scene make sure to do it safely think safely they have their gear on the other property your eyes and so forth and i had that for about a year what was that what was it like i mean you still kind of a young guy in iowa and if your chief is ordering something and you don't think it's safe because that's your focus off of a chief or something i would say a wide kind of question you really want to do that on the other hand if i saw firefighter doing something wrong i would say hey you need to put your mask on do this either tell the put his gear on or get his tail off that you make the decision and that particular captive wasn't too happy to be accurate afterwards but it was a safety issue you know we still have fire in this house we still  coming out of these holes and you never you know have all this gear and i felt a safety officer with my job to tell him to either put your gear on or get out of the way so nine hundred eighty when you began was there the same focus on safety is there was fourteen years later there was always a focus on safety the old reason why we had this position is a national fire protection association came up with a standard for the position of safety officer because you have had fire ground deaths on the fire on fire on the injuries so there was more will focus on you know safety on the fire on your personal being safe because if they get hurt they can't do their job they can't serve the public so this position come out of the same the early eight was really you were charge of the crew now you're responsible for the people and here command in my whole thought process change afterward because now you are going to be a leader so it's your job to look out for your people basically look out for your people by raid i mean you look at what you're driving you know where you're going you know you not to get there kind of sizing up the situation you know you got a report of a house fire got a report of a person someone trapped you know what are you going to do when you get there are you ready to go do you have all your gear on the people in the back have their gear on you know you're given assignments to like ok sounds like from the what police reports are telling us there's someone in the house and they've got fire in the back of the back  we're ready to go all your quit resign your mask is on you just pull in the line the walls it's napoles and you make sure by the time you get to the front door that it's charge that you have water in the line and you're ready to make entry the first time you were in charge what was that like feel scary it really was because for me i like to plan things out well you can't plan fires players have a role mindset you got to kind of work with them you want to get ahead of the situation but it was just scary it was just you know you have butterflies in your stomach because you're always afraid you're going to do something wrong or something's going to happen that you never accounted for one wrap it up can do that any other questions  commanded in two thousand and six nice hot july day got a report of a house fire in the station seven area when i say station seven area the save was broken up in the five districts he had stationed one bitch was the all these come to mind station to kill gla would see in hazelwood the fire chief coming up from the other direction because he lives not too far from there so i make a left hand turn come around the corner make another turn and i pull up to this house and of course the garage wall involved the breezeway of the house as car run in the other neighbors was looking for the guy she goes oh i think he ran back in the house there's propane tanks in the garage and can you find the cat and i said well two out of three  it so i get out of the car and it kind of do what we know is a three sixty surveyed basically walk around the building to see what you got in i'm looking at this garage it's completely involved and i'm watching a fire do this literally do this as it's spreading into the house so i just try to think i'm going to get really go all set up while what got this fire going this is the part that always intrigued me look at this fire going is the guy used a blowtorch to kill the w the neighbors come up to me go like he's always been doing it he's always been used to blowtorch in the weeds so just to my mind i said the weeds fight back the weed started the house on fire and to make a long story short we put the fire out we got the guy out of the house because i was more worried about the cars explode because the tires were blowing on the car so the worried about that i was just propane tanks because they pretty much it all already got i want to wrap up your comments hopefully you will go on the web you will read these are all histories are are get inspired and do well histories with your family because remembering these you know for firefighter these are every day stories they need you know the everything stories what we do with our lives on an everyday basis is fascinating down the line ten years fifteen years twenty years from your children what was what was my mom's life like what was dad's life like what did they do at work these are all important stories so i encourage all of you to consider doing your own oral histories thank you to joe who is very involved with the minnesota's state where the men know it's the firefighters call so we set up this trust fund it basically grew to about a million dollars and of course when you have a million dollar trust fund you know a lot of people that somebody want to spend the money with the ideals that talk about oil like this oral histories for service for older guys can get volunteer job of his that is probably only sixty to seventy hours a week just a couple comments to wrap up there were hundreds of volunteer firemen we have only captured the stories of seven and that's about two hours so this is just a very small percentage of the hours but nonetheless a search to capture some of the personal stories of that transition from when we had a all volunteer for our department till today when it's all strictly paid staff a lot of the community feeling has been lost going into  a paid staff so we're trying to capture a little of that we do have an exhibit at our museum the broom to pair teach farm and there are flyers on the back table when we have open houses please come and  see some of the other artifacts we are still collecting artifacts photos and histories of all through the volunteer fire departments were in the midst of cataloguing and scanning several hundred photographs from parksi