The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
PAST AND PRESENT
Fire chief makes, retells history
History repeated itself on the Amherst Fire Department when Chief Jim Wilhelm followed in his father’s fire boots.
It started when he was very young. The boys in town knew where to find action.
“I remember when the old fire station was below city hall yet, and we still lived in town,” said Wilhelm, 65, who was born and raised on Cleveland Avenue at Five Points. “It was the late ’50s, early ’60s. When the fire alarm went off you peddled your bike to city hall and sat on the grass on the hill, and watched the fire trucks go out and watched them come back.
“The fire lieutenant or captain would come out and tell us to stay seated,” Wilhelm said. “When they were all in, he would come out and take us into the station and let us go in and look around.
“One of the things I remember very vividly was before Memorial Day every year, the firefighters always went to the graveyards on Cleveland Street, Crown Hill, Brownhelm and St. Joseph’s, all those cemeteries where deceased firefighters from way back were buried. They had markers on their graves that said they were members of Amherst Fire Department. We would place red flags on the markers that said, ‘Loyal to your duty,’” Wilhelm said. “I did that with my dad for 15 years, even when I was out of high school. He would say, ‘We’re doing the graves,’ and I would go out with him.
“I was little, 6 or 7 years old, and he would take me,” Wilhelm said. “And still to this day I’m doing it. I have taken my son a few times before he moved away. I’ve done it for so long I don’t even need a map. Although we do have maps drawn up that show where all these places are at.
“I’ve also been branded as the department historian, partly of my choosing,” Wilhelm said. “I love researching the history of this old town.”
Wilhelm has logged 40 years so far compared with his father’s 42 years of jumping at tone outs as an adult and racing to scenes of distress. And he’s not done yet.
Then when Mayor Mark Costilow made a provisional appointment of Wilhem to the position of chief a few months ago, he followed his father in shouldering firehouse accountability as well.
“My father was here 42 years,” Wilhelm said. “He was interim chief for a short period of time from 1986 to 1987. For many, many years he was assistant fire chief, as was I from 1992 until now.”
As assistant chief, Wilhelm’s responsibilities included all trucks,
equipment and the fire station at 414 Church St.
He plans to replace two smaller trucks next year. The rest, he said, will outlast him on the department.
In the next few months the department of 36 total firefighters will witness appointment of a new assistant chief, then a new captain and a new lieutenant as people move up, he said. The resumes of those vying for leadership roles impressed him, he said.
The chief is the only fulltime position, he said. Everyone else receives a salary if he makes the percentage of calls required in a month, and is paid on call.
“This job has turned out to be a very lucrative parttime job,” Wilhelm said. “An average guy can make $12,000 to $14,000 a year here. It can be a pretty good part-time gig.”
Although, firefighters run into a burning building while everyone else is running out, the chief recommends adopting a Boy Scout motto and “Be prepared for anything.”
While he’s building the department and training his replacements, Wilhelm keeps his hand in historical research and preservation for the next generations.
“We have the fire museum out at the Amherst Historical Society,” Wilhelm said. “For the last 20 years I’ve been researching fire stuff. In the last seven years I wandered into the train wreck. I have volumes of news articles. I could tell you 99 percent of the fires in this town back to the 1800s. Members of the fire department, right now we’re at 390 total members through time, whether they were on here for a month or 50 years.”
He’s been asked if he’s going to write a book.
“If the Good Lord lets me hang around long enough,” Wilhelm said. “I’ve got enough information for more than one book. Yearly we have the fifth and sixth grades come to the fire museum, tour Sandstone Village. That’s a whole week program. There are kids every day. Of course we’re open for activities out there. The museum opened in 2011. We’ve had a lot of people go through there, a lot of questions asked. People are amazed by the stuff we have.”
For his first couple of years on the department, Wilhelm kept a personal log of responding to fires.
As he recalls, his first call was a grass fire off of Long Street and West Martin.
“They told me get on a truck, grab a broom and start beating out the grass fire,” Wilhelm said. “Your adrenaline rush is just amazing.”
He was injured fighting a fire in an attic at a house struck by lightning.
“The attic was on fire on Cleveland Avenue just west of Woodhill,” Wilhelm said. “There were three of us inside the house. There was no way to get to the fire. We didn’t have a ladder. We had a chair. There was a scuttle to get into the attic. We pushed it open. We put the hose into the scuttle, but it wasn’t working. We couldn’t get it to the fire. So two guys picked me up. We had our air masks on and air equipment. It was very hard to understand somebody. This was years ago. This happened about 1980. We didn’t have the clothing we have today. We didn’t have hoods. All I had was a helmet.
“I was spraying water and steam got me,” Wilhelm said. “It got my neck. I was yelling at them and kicking. They finally brought me back down. Through that happening, within a couple weeks we all had hoods. Bumps and bruises, yeah, we all got those. Never was seriously injured and I was in a lot of house fires and building fires over time.”
Professionally, Wilhelm worked for 29 years for Ohio Edison as a lineman.
“For two years after I retired from there, I went back to lineman’s school as an instructor,” Wilhelm said. “They thought enough of me to ask me to be an instructor, so I must have done something right.”
Though coming out of retirement to accept the fulltime chief’s position has its rewards, it cuts into his fishing time.
“My father-in-law has a boat,” Wilhelm said. “Of course, the fishing in the last few years hasn’t been great. We like to perch fish and walleye, but perch fishing isn’t as great in the central basin.”
As a member on the board of the Amherst Historical Society, Wilhelm says a next big project may be to erect an old water tower next to the caboose.
“There are no restroom facilities out there,” Wilhelm said. “That water tower was from the quarries. It was donated. It’s sitting down there at the end of Jefferson Street. They’re going to put sandstone up and set it on metal on the sandstone, and put restrooms underneath. They got grant money from the state. There is something we have to match.
“There’s a lot of history here,” Wilhelm said. “This town at one time was bigger than Elyria. That was in the 1880s. History stuff. I love that stuff.”