Happy Birthday, Bert

 The Mandarin Volunteer Fire Department

     "If I hadn't gone to work for Bellsouth, I would have been a fireman", said former Mandarin resident, Bert Wasmund.

     "My family lived on the corner of Loretta and Mina.  My dad, Don, who worked at the shipyards until his death at age 60, was a volunteer fireman.  We could get to what was then the fire station at the north entrance to Mandarin Road on State Road 13 in about 4 minutes", he continued.

     Bert said he enjoyed the camaraderie of the other fire fighters as well as the rush of adrenaline as they hurried to a call.  This was before consolidation.  Many areas of Jacksonville and Duval County had volunteer fire departments.  "It was just what people did", said Bert.

     He remembered his most frightening fire.  That was when the Dutton Salvage Company on Philips Highway burned.  There were a lot of paint cans and old military equipment at the huge "junk yard".  

     "Volunteer Firemen from throughout Duval County came to fight the blaze", he said.  "Fortunately, the only loss was what the Salvage company lost financially and there's always more junk", he continued.

     Bert remembered a 1950 Dodge Power Wagon that was their fire truck.  "It was four-wheel drive, carried 450 gallons of water and was equipped with a front mount pump.  There was a ladder rack on the top with a couple of extension ladders and the tools of the trade included."

     "The original fire house had a second story but was not built out", he said.  "We would go up there and practice carrying someone down a ladder."

     When it was time to build the current fire station, Bert was on hand to help.  It was a volunteer effort.

      He helped dig the foundations, set the concrete blocks and carried the five gallons of concrete to the men who were working on the scaffold.  When it was complete, it had three bays, a small office, bunk beds, a few chairs and a television set.  And there was a new 1958 LaFrance fire truck.  Later a tanker from Camp Blanding was added.

     Bert counts his experience as a volunteer fireman among his greatest memories.  

	The button from Bert's Fireman's hat

 He moved from Mandarin in the early sixties.  I met him in about 2004 through Kiwanis.  I learned that his mother, Miss Winnie, had been the nursery worker at the Episcopal Church of Our Saviour for many years.  Sometime later I learned through a mutual Bellsouth connection that he had been one of our Mandarin's  Volunteer Firemen.  

      As we talked, I watched as Bert's eyes light up as he talked about his childhood friends, Cary and Bill Morrow, James Folds and Joe Walsh.  His recollections made me want to know more about some of our Mandarin "oldies".