FACILITY FIRE BRI FIRE AND EMERGENCY SERVICES INS FIRE PROTECTION, DETECTION, AN
FIRE SERVICE HYDRAULICS AND WATER SUPPLY HAZARDOUS MATERIALS TECHNICIAN PRINCIPLES OF PASSENGER VEHICLE EXTRICATION GROUND COVER FIRE FIGHTING FOR STRUCTURAL FIREFIGHTERS
Volunteer Fireman magazine (four times in 1943) through his friendship with the organization’s chief engineer, Horatio Bond. To help alleviate the personnel shortage during World War II, Pence trained co-ed firefighters and startled the FDIC by taking their “chief” to the 1944 meeting as a delegate. Even so, Pence’s love of publicity helped more than it harmed. He focused attention on the need for and benefits fof better firefighter training. He used his ties with firefighters in other cities and states to promote training, especially the Oklahoma A&M academic program in its early, struggling years. Above all, he added the force of his dynamic personality to the movement for better firefighter training. Pence died in his sleep while on-duty at the Campus Fire Station in January 1945.
W. Fred Heisler Fred Heisler was a special person (Figure 33) . A skilled teacher and speaker with an innate gift for working with groups, he came to the fire service at just the right moment to use his special talents for the benefit of firefighters. Like Ray Pence and R. J. Douglas, Heisler came into the fire service from another area entirely; he was a teacher, not a firefighter. What’s more, he was well past the age when most people decide what they are going to do with their lives.
William Fredrick Heisler was born July 1, 1887, the son of Phillip Heisler of Etna Green, Indiana. He grew up in Indiana and attended Valparaiso University for two years. Then he moved to Howard, Kansas, and married his wife, Florence. Heisler taught school there six years before moving his family to Ponca City, Oklahoma. He taught in the city school system there for the next 16 years. During that time, Heisler finished his Bachelor’s degree at Oklahoma A&M College and developed and interest in industrial education. Heisler firmly believed that workers would do their jobs better if they understood the basic process behind their work. As many unskilled workers had little education, Heisler began to develop elementary science and mathematics courses, first as the supervisor of industrial education at Ponca City High School and later as an itinerant teacher/trainer for trade and industrial education at Oklahoma A&M. His work with oil field workers was incorporated into his Master’s thesis in 1935, but he applied his philosophy of education to janitors, mechanists, welders, electricians, mechanics, morticians and finally to firefighters. Heisler became actively involved with fire service training when he took part in a 1932 meeting to train fire department instructors. Though he attended as an observer, his superiors, L. Keith Covell and Professor Charles Briles, called on him to fill in after the invited speaker from the U. S. Department of Vocational Education was called home. Heisler was 45 and had had little experience with firefighters, but this was the beginning of a new career for him. By the next year, 1933, Heisler had designed a course called “Elementary Science as Applied to Fire Fighting,” which he taught at the July meeting of fire department instructors. At the same meeting, participants were invited to help lay the foundation for a book of the same title, which Pence proudly reported was in publication by the end of the year. From then on, Heisler worked for and with firefighters, first in the fire service training and later as editor of the “Red Books.” When Oklahoma A&M agreed to help Stillwater build a campus fire station that would also house the nation’s first academic program for firefighters, Heisler gave the project his support. When the first classes began in September 1937, Heisler designed the curriculum and administered it as head of the new School of Technical Training. In the years that followed, Heisler continued to use his skills as a group leader and writer to compile the manuals until his retirement in 1955. At the same time, he learned the business of fire fighting and became a popular speaker at fire schools all over the nation and at FDIC and NFPA meetings. Three (3) of his speeches, “Forever Amber,” “Ana Lyza” and “Tappin’ Wheels,” inspired many in Figure 33
IFSTA/FPP: THE FIRST 90 YEARS 53
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