Minister Recalls Tragedies; Ex-Fireman Salutes The Men

March 30, 1964

Taken from the Daily-Citizen News, written by Rev. J. C. Williamson, Baptist Association Missionary

Tragedy has again stalked among us. I am an old fireman who spent 16 years of my life in the uniform of the Chattanooga Fire Department riding the big red wagons. I want to say a word for those who protect our life and property.

Each day of his life a fireman lives with the prospect of a tragedy like the one that befell our firemen this morning. Yet, they learn never to worry about it until it comes.

In my fireman days, which ended April 1, 1941, when I became an associational missionary. I saw tragedy over and over among my friends. Five minutes after I walked out of the Number Five Hall one afternoon my company went out on a run and ended up in a store in an intersectional wreck with an ambulance also on emergency runs.

Tragedies Around Him

I stood one morning and helped play the lines on a fire and saw the body of one of my buddies carried by me. There wasn’t a mark on him. He suffocated in the smoke of burning paper.

A lieutenant who brought his bride and began housekeeping in a duplex with us, died when a car ran in front of his engine on an 80-foot street. He and another died and not a man of that crew ever worked again.

I could add many other memories.

Before dawn today a building took from us three young men who had great hopes for the years to come. They were not to blame. Maybe nobody was to blame. It is impossible to predict what a fire will do, or how any building, new or old, will react to fire.

If firemen are to fight fire they have to fight fire where it is. They must get up on it. When they were hired they agreed to take risks, and every fire, large or small, has a potential incalculable risk, that Fire Chief Luther Broome or anyone else can ever know. They too their risk and the building did the unexpected. They are gone this morning.

Trained for Valor

They are not heroes, in that sense, and do not claim to be. But many of them do heroic things that are far beyond the call of duty. They have been trained that way and they do it as a part of the job without thinking of the cost they might have to pay in fulfilling their duty.

When I go to bed and to sleep in peace, there are those who look after my safety. All firemen and enforcement officers, policemen, deputies, etc., live with the same spectra, but it is an interesting life and that is why many of them stick to it.

One never knows what interesting experience, or what tragedy, might be around the next corner, or on the next shift. Firemen, like railroad trainmen, learn to love the excitement and the smoke and dirt and the wetness of their job. I wore their uniform with pride and still have a soft place in my heart for all who wear a uniform.

Dalton lost today. Dalton lost something of itself, its life. Three young men, went to their death, protecting our property, a forth was hurt. There is no reason to say anything about that particular building. If it had not been that building it might have been my home or your place of business. What can we do about it? Nothing about their loss. Neither can we refill the aching hearts of their families. We can’t take their places, though some more of Dalton’s fine young men will be called to that duty. Maybe we can help to care for their families.

Reduce Some Hazards

We can do our best to take some of the hazards from their tasks by a strict inspection of business and manufacturing buildings with ordinances that will require the abatement of hazards found, and with better pay and as good working conditions as circumstances will allow.

I am sure we can respect the sound of their bell and siren when they hit the streets and give them the right-of-way.

Personally, I think the city should designate some minister as chaplain to minister to the spiritual needs of those who cannot attend church regularly.

They are not a bunch who “loaf” around most of the time. They are at work for long hours as you and I think of work and when the bell hits they are on the way within 30 to 40 seconds at a task as necessary to civilization as stores and cars and homes and manufacturing, and though it has now been many years since I wore their uniform, I have a profound respect for their loyalty and faithfulness to their task.

An old adage says never talk about a man until you have walked in his shoes many days. I have walked in their shoes with pride in my job as a fireman.