January 10, 2015
Veteran McGraw firefighter honored
Bob Ellis/staff photographer
Howard Smith, 82, a longtime member of the McGraw Fire Department, is being honored.
McGRAW — A half-century ago, Howard Smith joined the McGraw Fire Department as a volunteer.
Tonight, the department will make it known that his service certainly will not go unrecognized.
Smith, 82, will be presented with a plaque from his department recognizing the five decades of service he provided to the village at an awards banquet at Tinelli’s Hathaway House in Solon following a 7 p.m. dinner tonight.
“He’d do anything you could ever ask of him,” Fire Chief Tom Heller said. “He was always very active in the department. It’s very rare you’ll ever see anyone reach 50 years in an organization.”
The second-longest serving member in the history of the department, Smith, known as “Smitty” by his fellow firefighters, decided he wanted to be a firefighter from a very young age, when a fire on his childhood farm in Homer flared up. However, his plans were stymied his military commitment, holding off his enrollment in the department until 1964, when he was 31 years old.
Saying the department was a powerful force throughout his life, Smith said fighting fires in his day was a cooperative effort.
“All the volunteers are a big family, throughout the whole county,” Smith said. “We would go all the way up to LaFayette and Tully to help.”
Smitty held several positions in the department. He said he “paid his dues,” serving as a trustee for a decade. And after 50 years of service, he stillremembers every call, even as the burden on the department grew over the years.
“When I joined, we had maybe 74 calls a year,” Smith said. “Now, we have almost 300 a year.”
Smith is still animated about every detail of his job, from the old days of having to operate the pumps by hand all the way to the very last details of the pumper truck they used, which he rode up and down Route 41 to fire calls on its 1942 Ford chassis.
Though his last call took place for a tree down on July 1 of 2014, to this day the fire department still holds a major place in his heart.
His kitchen is filled with firefighting apparel, including hats to old jackets commemorating his time and service to the community.
And even 50 years later, he still has an active scanner next to his refrigerator, alerting him to every call the department gets.
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