Stop 27 – The Department's Social Side Continues

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The fire department has always been about more than fires.

At first, conventions were mostly about competition, but by the twentieth century they became business meetings for the growing Nebraska State Volunteer Firemen's Association. The state convention was still the highlight of the year, and volunteers collected ribbons and souvenirs from each one. In nineteen sixty-four, the department bought the nineteen twenty-nine Model A Ford, mainly for parades and conventions.

Until nineteen twenty-three, the department held dances and even sponsored circuses to pay for insurance and equipment. Then the City Council set up a tax levy to fund the department, and after that, dances and dinners were just for fun. The department still holds an appreciation and awards banquet every winter.

The department also cares for its own. Early on, it made sure every volunteer had a proper headstone. In nineteen thirty-five, it put up a monument to past firefighters in Wyuka Cemetery. And one headstone here belongs to J. Brown, a volunteer killed in a train wreck in eighteen eighty. He had no family, so the department put up his stone.