Box 27 Associates celebrates 75 years

An hour spent with Warren Downing, 83, Dickie Roberts, 89, Harold Locher, 84, and Jim Snyder, 85, is long enough to form a working hypothesis about what happened to the Little Rascals: They grew up and joined Box 27 Associates.

The group that helps firefighters at the scenes of major blazes and disasters will host a 75th birthday open house at 7 p.m. Thursday at 17 W. Johnny Lytle Ave., the police substation that once housed Fire Station No. 9.

Members of Box 27 have plenty of stories to tell, some of which are shared here. But Box 27 is a thing of the present as well as the past.

Since becoming the Springfield Fire Divison’s chief, Mike Beers said he often has asked himself “What happens if I don’t have them?”

Because there are fewer fires and because the department is better equipped, “we don’t use (Box 27) a lot,” he said.

“But when you need it, they’re just there,” refilling air cylinders, providing extra lighting and giving firefighters the food and drink they need to recharge and continue to do their jobs.

Said Beers, “that’s why the guys love them.”

The lessened load from the Fire Division has allowed Box 27 to branch out, helping township departments at fire scenes and lighting accident and crime scenes for Springfield Police.

Vicki Matthies joined Box 27 as a result of her involvement with the Citizens Police Academy. Along with Judy Donegan, Shirley Ford and Debbie Fishbach, she is part of a crucial female contingent of community servants.

Typical of the male members is Jimmy Betts, 59, who was 4 when his mother took him to watch firefighters battle a blaze at a neighbor’s Bellevue Avenue home.

“I was hooked from then on,” Betts said. “I enjoy the people in the organization. I enjoy the firemen. It’s kind of a second family.”

Here are stories members of that family shared at old Fire House No. 9.

Harold Locher: "I grew up in the department. My father was chief from 1929-34. He built a new house on Rosewood Avenue, and they installed a fire bell in the upstairs hallway" because there were no radios at the time to spread alarms.

“I had two brothers. (The bell rang so often) we slept right through it.”

The first fire he remembers as a Box 27 member was at the old Merchants and Mechanics Bank building at the corner of Main and Limestone streets.

“J.C. Penney was located next door, and I’ll always remember at the height of that fire a light came on in the upstairs window,” Locher said. “Somebody had run some kind of cord over from J.C. Penney company illegally and the fire caused this light to come on.”

Jim Snyder: When he stopped in Station 5 on the city's west side as a kid, telephones were rare, so the fire division used street corner call boxes.

“It was a complicated mechanism but would send in a series of bell rings. They could decode the clangs of the bells and know where it was pulled.”

Snyder was recruited into Box 27 by Dick Cartmell, who sold blinds on North Limestone Street, later developed Park Shopping Center “and was a fire buff like the rest of us,” Snyder said.

Although always on the sidelines with Box 27, he got an inkling of what fire fighting was like when he responded to the Ohio Masonic Home at 2 a.m. on a winter morning when it was 20 below, the wind was gusting across the parking lot and the scene was filling up with squads and firefighters.

There to serve coffee — and with Warren Downing at his side — he felt a surge of adrenaline.

The potential seriousness of the situation had run through him like a red bull.

David Adams remembers the Masonic Home fire as well, largely because of how well his beard was coated with snow and ice.

“I’ve been pretty well through the ranks,” Adams said.

For the firefighters, “extreme heat is worse than cold to a point,” he said, although winter makes it more difficult for Box 27 members to keep up with the air tanks they refill for firefighters.

“When it’s winter time, they’ll freeze up on them. We put them inside our truck and thaw them.”

The current truck is set up for providing lights at the scene and a place for firefighters to get in out of the cold.

And for that, Adams said, the firefighters “are very appreciative.”

Jimmy Betts stopped by to take pictures at a general alarm fire in 1984 at the former Kelsey-Hayes plant when Winney Groves, a nurse he'd known from North High School and a Box 27 member, made him an offer he couldn't refuse: "By God, if you're going to be out here, you're going to join."

From then on “I always carried a monitor with me,” Betts said. “And when the alarm (for the big fire at Crowell Collier) came in (on May 10, 1999), I walked into my boss’ office and told him what was going on.”

His boss told him he’d better go.

For Betts and many firefighters, it was the most memorable fire ever.

“I spent the next 27 hours down at that fire,” he said. “We filled just shy of 600 air packs (for firefighters). To be honest with you, I didn’t know there was that many supply vehicles with compressed air in them in this part of the state.”

Vickie Matthies said that in trying to recruit new members, she and other Box 27 associates can't offer pay, she said, but they can guarantee it's not a thankless task.

“The praise and thanks we get from (the firefighters) is all we need,” Matthies said. “They just never, ever fail to thank us over and over again.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368 or tstafford@coxohio.com.

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