Washington Volunteer Firemen founded in 1963 after fatal fires
By Joanne Degnan, Managing Editor
ROBBINSVILLE — In 1963, when gas cost 29 cents a gallon and AT&T push-button telephones were the newest consumer craze, a band of residents founded the Washington Volunteer Firemen with a $47 used fire engine and a rented garage.
Their mission to create the town’s own fire company five decades ago was born of purpose and urgency in the aftermath of two fatal house fires over a 10-month period in 1961 and 1962 that killed seven young township children.
”I do believe those fires were the main reasons why the organization was formed,” said WVF trustee and past president Bob Thomson, who joined in 1974 and remembers hearing stories from older members about those fatal fires.
”I was only 14 when (the fires) occurred, but I know it was a terrible, terrible tragedy that greatly affected the community,” Mr. Thomson said.
Mr. Thomson, who rode the fire engines for 37 years before he stopped fighting fires last year, joined other longtime firemen and Ladies Auxiliary members Sunday for the organization’s 2013 officer installation and awards ceremony, celebrating 50 years of service to Robbinsville residents.
There were tables of old photos, fire company memorabilia and plenty of stories to share about barn fires, plane crashes, industrial fires, traffic accidents, brush fires that burned for days and house and apartment complex blazes fought over the past 50 years. (Not to mention the occasional deer in a swimming pool and cat in a sewer drain).
In the early 1960s, Washington was a 22-square-mile town with 2,100 residents that had been without its own volunteer fire company since a previous one disbanded during World War II. The township, instead, paid $3,500 a year to volunteer companies in Allentown, Hightstown and Hamilton for fire protection.
The wisdom of that arrangement — given the distance these out-of-town companies had to travel to reach Robbinsville — was questioned after four children all under the age of 5 were killed March 22, 1961, inside a trailer in what was then called the Robbinsville Mobile Home Park on Route 130.
Terry, Larry, Sherry and Connie Mae Holmes died in a bunk bed after a kitchen fire broke out while their mother walked to the store for milk, according to published accounts at the time.
Ten months later, a predawn fire on New Year’s Day 1962 destroyed the Church Street home of Frank and Patricia Hutnick and killed their three youngest children: Gloria, 8; Frank Jr., 19 months; and Donna, 6 months.
Fred Keeler, the first president of the Washington Volunteer Firemen and the driving force behind its establishment in 1963, had been general manager at the mobile home park where the Holmes children died, according to newspaper accounts. Three of the original WVF trustees were also residents of the trailer park.
But launching a new fire company proved to be a lengthy process, Mr. Thomson noted. It took five years for the WVF to transition from newly minted volunteers assisting the fire companies from Allentown, Hightstown and Hamilton at Washington Township fire scenes to a self-sufficient organization capable of providing fire protection on its own.
Fire Chief Chuck Petty said Friday that those first volunteers needed to obtain extensive training, a firehouse and equipment in order for their organization to pass muster with the Fire Insurance Rating Organization of New Jersey, a forerunner of the Insurance Service Office. The ISO evaluates and assigns ratings to communities for insurance companies based on their fire-suppression capabilities, including equipment, staffing and training.
”It wasn’t until 1968 that we received ISO approval and proved we could handle the job of taking sole responsibility for the township,” Chief Petty said.
The years between 1963 and 1968 were busy ones as the WVF prepared to fly solo. Firemen started building a new two-bay firehouse in 1965 (complete with “a bomb-proof basement shelter,” then Chief Philip Warren said at the time) for their newly purchased 1944 Mack pumper and the 1936 Dodge fire engine they had bought for a song two years before.
Fred Vahlsing, owner of a local potato-packing plant, donated the 3 acres on Route 130 for the firehouse, and the volunteers erected the 6-foot-tall iron locomotive tire outside that once was used as a gong by the town’s disbanded fire company to summon volunteers. The gong is decorative now, long ago replaced by Plectrons (single-channel radio receivers that were the mainstay of emergency responders in the 1970s) and eventually modern pagers.
The firehouse, which has undergone several expansions, remains home to the Robbinsville Division of Fire, which over the last two decades has evolved into a 24/7 combination career and volunteer department.
In its heyday in the 1970s and early 1980s, the WVF had more than 40 active volunteer firefighters who, along with the Ladies Auxiliary, marched in parades and organized a myriad of fundraisers, such as car shows, fish fry events, bingo and roast beef dinners that covered the fire company’s expenses.
By 1988, however, the volunteer rolls were dwindling and manpower was insufficient to cover the rapidly growing municipality and its increasing number of calls. The skyrocketing cost of fire engines and other equipment also was outstripping the volunteers’ fundraising capabilities, Mr. Thomson said.
This led to the establishment in February 1989 of the Washington Township Fire District with an elected Board of Fire Commissioners and a fire tax to provide the necessary funds for fire protection. The district hired its first paid drivers in 1989 and 1990, followed by additional career staff in subsequent years as volunteer numbers declined and fire calls increased.
The Fire Department answered more than 1,100 fire calls in 2012 (a number than doesn’t include ambulance calls), Mr. Thomson noted, compared to the 64 fire calls in 1974 when he first became a volunteer fireman.
Six years ago, the township dissolved the district, taking control of the department and its budget. The 18 career firefighters are under the command of Deputy Chief Daniel Schaffener while the dozen or so volunteers report to Chief Petty, a volunteer firefighter for 38 years in Robbinsville, Roebling and Florence.
Lt. Joe Goss, the current president of the Washington Volunteer Firemen Inc., which kept its traditional name even after the town changed its to Robbinsville in 2008, says the nonprofit organization still works hard at fundraising to help reduce Fire Department expenses that would, otherwise, be borne by taxpayers.
The volunteers recently raised the required $28,598 local match to obtain new fire radios and pagers valued at $141,579. The equipment purchase is made possible under a $2.8 million Federal Radio Grant awarded to Mercer County, and the WVF check means the town will not have to use $28,598 in taxpayers’ money to participate.
The WVF also purchased a $12,000 thermal energy camera for the department and paid $4,000 for a new sign and message board outside the firehouse to replace the one damaged by the construction of new sewer lines along Route 130.
”This is what the volunteers do. When we get money from our fund drive, we put it right back into equipment purchases to save the taxpayers money,” said WVF Vice President Lt. Thomas Krakowski.
Chief Petty and Lt. Goss say the biggest challenge facing the WVF in the decades ahead is attracting new members, which is why the organization was thrilled to have recently recruited five new volunteers. These men, all between the ages of 19 and 23, now are taking state-required Firefighter I training classes at the Burlington County Emergency Services Training Center.
”We’re pretty excited about that,” Chief Petty said. “I can’t ever recall being able to send five at once to school before.”
For more information about becoming a volunteer firefighter in Robbinsville, go to the Division of Fire website at www.robbinsvillefire.org.