The Memory Book Project
The History of Vashon Island’s Volunteer Fire Service
We need your help in making this project successful. Donations, photos or stories of fire district buildings, personnel, events, fires or celebrations are needed. Please contact Susan Wolf at VIFR 206 463-4466 or email swolf@vifr.org for more information.
A Community Service Passion:
As a resident of Vashon, a former or current volunteer, you have witnessed historic events, people, and transitions that helped shape the history of Vashon Island Fire and Rescue.
Now is the perfect time to make sure the events of the century past are recorded for posterity. The Memory Book Project aims to
collect firsthand memories, and photographs of the Fire District throughout the last century, since its beginnings in 1942.
The unique history of this community will be revealed through your voice. We intend to publish a Memory Book containing quotes and photographs from the many participants.
Your stories and photographs will also be added to the permanent archives of the Vashon Heritage Museum. These anecdotes may be used in upcoming exhibits, publications, or research.
If you are just curious, look at the following pages for glimpses of our ever changing history.
Vashon Island Fire & Rescue Turns 65
Vashon Island Fire and Rescue turned sixty-five years old in March, 2007. It unofficially began in 1940 when Axel Peterson presented a five-point plan for a fire district. Preceding the plan Islanders had acquired or built their own equipment.
Over the summers of 1928 and 1929, two carnivals raised $700 that Deb Harrington and volunteers used to purchase a soda-acid chemical fire truck. Then they built a hose-wheel truck. Additional surplus from Tacoma brought apparatus and converted commercial trucks which served the community with responses at the breakneck speed of 8 miles per hour!
Island spirit was racing at a faster pace though. The Beall brothers, Fergie and John, organized their employees at the Beall Greenhouses into a fire protection district in early 1941. A year later, Jesse Shaw and Harry Robbins attached a homemade sign “Vote Today For Fire District” on rebuilt oil delivery truck. On March 26, 1942, Islanders approved the formation of King County Fire District 13 by a vote of 426 to 4. Our first commissioners were: George McCormick, Johnny Beall and Harry Robbins. John
Beall was appointed Fire Chief. The Second World War confronted all Islanders that year, but also the fact that, “The District encompassed the whole island and the Commissioners had their hands full figuring where additional stations and equipment would be located when they could afford them.”
(The Fire Districts of King County”, Harold “Jiggs” Hoyt, p. 44, 1990.)
Facing the challenges were these first volunteers in 1940-42:
Lloyd BEVINGTON, Paul BILLINGSLEY, Russell BRAMMER, Norman EDSON, Jud KENNEDY, Marvin LARSON, M. LUND, Guy MONSSMITH, George NELSON, Russell POWELL, Otis PUTNAM, Harry ROBBINS, Frank SELLECK, Jesse F. SHAW, Ferguson BEALL, John BEALL, John CALHOUN, Robert CALLOWAY, Ralph
COOPER, Douglas CULLEN, Procter J. FERGUSON, Fred GUGLOMO, Hjalmer KVISVIK, Halvor L. LARSON, Lionel MORTENSEN, Dale SHRIDE, Stephen FLOYD and Gordon WENDORF.
To date, these pioneer volunteers inspired over 750 Islanders to join the fire service over sixty-five years.
Fire History Moment
by Fr. Peter Dally, former Chaplain and FF/EMT
One bright Sunday, I was the dispatcher, mostly issuing fire permits; it was a quiet morning. Then two 8/10-year-old boys came in, “I’m the kid that died,” one of them said. I remembered the incident. I had to give CPR three times, of which sad to say
none survived. What happened was, off Magnolia Beach in outer harbor, on a piece of Styrofoam, the boys were playing, then went into cramps and hypothermia set in and they yelled for help! A red-blooded hero dove into the water and swam out to help. This ended up now with three yelling for help! A woman on the beach pushed a row boat out, and rescued all three. Once on shore, the boy went into shock and stopped breathing. She gave him CPR and brought him back. That day she gave birth to a baby!
. . . These were not just aid runs, these were concerns to help people!
Fire History Moment
The funniest thing that I can remember during my time in the fire department occurred when responding to an arson fire at the judge’s office in Vashon.
We (Sta 2 Burton) were approaching the front of the office when the whole front of the office blew out and glass went right in front of the pumper clear across the street. I approached the nearest hydrant, hooked up a line to it and turned it on. To my amazement the hydrant slowly lifted up out of the ground about 5 feet into the
air. As I standing there unbelieving at what I was seeing, the chief (Craig Harmeling) came over and saved the day by shutting it off and it slowly sank back into the ground.
We went to another hydrant and hooked up. If the first hydrant had blown clear out, we would have lost pressure to every other
hydrant. Evidently, sometime in the past, some car or truck had struck the hydrant and broken it off below ground with no one knowing it.
