Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 8, 1991 TAG: 9102080778
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Here's how much:
Back then, he fought more fires in one night than he does now during an entire year.
He also weighed 100 pounds less.
Neckties were part of the firefighter's uniform, even when working a fire.
And rescuing cats trapped in trees was part of the job.
Also back then:
Firefighters would often leave a house cleaner than they found it, mopping up behind themselves after the fire was out.
Starting pay was $195 a month.
And a fire was a thrill, not routine.
"Shoot, it's changed, man. It's changed," Swanson said between spits of tobacco juice at Fire Station No. 13 on Peters Creek Road in Northwest Roanoke. He's the captain there.
As the city's longest-serving firefighter, Swanson, 64, should know about change.
When he joined the Fire Department 43 years ago, Roanoke was a hot town - literally. He worked a ladder truck downtown, which was then a firetrap of old warehouses and abandoned buildings that kept a firefighter busy.
Swanson said it wasn't unusual to work several fires a night, and not just your minor trash-can fires, either. Often, these were big, multiple-alarm fires, the kind that lit up the sky.
He remembered his first call to a blaze near where the Poff Federal Building stands today.
He didn't know what to do.
Back then, there was no formal training. You learned by doing, pitching in as best you could. And you didn't just soak a place and go home, like firefighters do now. You mopped and squeegeed. You wiped off the furniture.
"I ain't kidding you; we left a lot of houses cleaner than when we got there," he said.
That was back before the fire marshal had to investigate every fire, so it didn't matter whether they disturbed possible evidence.
That was back when Swanson couldn't cook beyond boiling a pot of water and didn't much care. "I thought you were about half-sissy if you cooked," he said.
But he soon learned that cooking was an important part of being a firefighter. These guys, keep in mind, work 24-hour shifts. If they can't cook, they don't eat.
Swanson started with rice. Since he already knew how to boil water, how hard could rice be?
He boiled a pot of water and added his box of rice. It seemed like too much water for so little rice. So, he added another box, and another.
"I didn't know the stuff swelled up like that," he said. It wasn't long before he was up to his neck in rice.
That was 100 pounds ago.
Swanson enjoys cooking now. With a sly grin, he'll even tell you he's the best cook in the Fire Department. "I know how to fix stuff that tastes good to me."
Still, he credits the extra weight more to "middle-age spread" than his gourmet ability.
In 1948, he weighed just 135 pounds.
William Mullins, the fire chief then, didn't think that was enough. He liked his firefighters with more beef. But Swanson's father-in-law was buddies with Mullins, and the connection landed him a job.
A Rocky Mount native and Navy veteran, Swanson had been working at the Vinton Weaving Mill, where layoffs were common and his employment status unpredictable. He wanted something more stable.
"You'll never get wealthy working in the Fire Department, but you'll know what you make from one year to the next."
And "as long as you kept your nose clean, you knew you had a job," he said.
Since then, he has probably fought more fires than anybody in the department, although he can't begin to guess how many.
For 37 of those years he worked at downtown, high-run stations. He was moved out to head the Peters Creek station about five years ago. Compared with downtown, it's like retirement.
But it gives him plenty of time to fine-tune his cooking, chew tobacco and tell old fire stories.
Not for long, though. Swanson plans to retire at the end of June, four weeks short of the record for longest service to the department. He would stay long enough to break the record, he said, but it would somehow complicate his pension program.
Besides, enough is enough.
Firefighting doesn't hold quite the thrill it once did, like the first time he got to drive a fire engine. "It was like being in second heaven."
Now, it's much more routine.
Only once in all these years has he been scared at a fire, he said. That was at Magic City Laundry back when he first joined the department and the building's smokestacks collapsed onto firefighters below.
"It looked like men were crawling out from under bricks after those fell in," he said. "We were lucky nobody was killed."
Afterward, he thought about quitting. He's glad now he didn't, but the memory of that fire has remained with him for more than 40 years.
"Anytime you get a big fire, it's a dangerous situation. I'm still just trying to take it one day at a time," he said.
Swanson has been married for 46 years and has three children, including a son, Gerald, who has been a city firefighter for 19 years. Now Swanson is looking forward to retirement. He plans to spend much of his time camping with his grandchildren.
Yet, he'll miss firefighting, especially when it involves saving a person's life.
"I know I've actually saved people, or, I should say, `we.' It's not a one-man show, of course. I know there have been times when we have pulled people out of fires where they would have died. That gives you a good feeling," he said.
Swanson will leave with no regrets.
He said he probably could have been fire chief, but he never played the right politics. "Since I've been here, I've just tried to do my job, that's all."
by CNB