SENTIALS OF FIRE FIGHTING® AND RESCUE CTURAL FIRE FIGHTING: INITIAL RESPONSE STRATEGY AND TACTICS
PUMPING AND AERIAL APPARATUS DRIVER/OPERATOR HANDBOOK
CHIEF OFFICER OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY, HEALTH, AND WELLNESS FIRE INSPECTION AND CODE ENFORCEMENT
VE FIRE INSTRUCTOR
the service. In the last, Heisler stressed his philosophy of technical training: the need for workers to know how to do their jobs and why. Delegates to the annual validation conference got to know Heisler as a friend and host as well as a teacher. Some were especially stuck by Heislers’ kindness and understanding toward their children. Though husband and wife were intelligent, several of their children were mentally handicapped. In a day in which most people kept such children out of sight, the Heisler presented them openly as family members and encouraged all of their children to go as far with their education as possible. Most of Heisler’s acquaintances knew him for his kindness and easygoing nature. A hard-working man, he rarely lost his temper and was a natural peacemaker, a characteristic that came in handy at validation conferences. Heisler was an active member of the Baptist Church. He was also a temperance man, a fact that did not sit well with all firefighters. But those who knew him in his earlier years remembered Heisler as someone special, “the Will Rogers of the fire service” as Charles S. Morgan of Volunteer Fireman called him. Heisler died in 1962 at the age of 74.
Professor Raymond J. Douglas Professor Raymond J. (R. J.) Douglas, head of the firefighter training program at Oklahoma A&M College, was a researcher as well as a teacher (Figure 34) . He channeled his efforts into the growing body of technical information on fire prevention and control. He was also chairman of IFSTA’s executive board and oversaw the publication of the manuals.
Like Fred Heisler and Ray Pence, Douglas came to the fire service from another sphere. Like Heisler, he was a teacher first. He was born in 1902 in Grafton, West Virginia, and attended Davis and Elkins College, a small Presbyterian school. Later, he earned a Master’s degree in chemistry at the University of West Virginia. For 10 years, until 1937, he taught science and mathematics and coached football at the high school in Morefield, West Virginia. One day he watched a home burn down for lack of organized fire protection, and shortly thereafter, he was made chief of the new volunteer fire department. As Douglas knew nothing about fire fighting, he began reading what he could on the subject and attending training schools. His interest in fire fighting soon became a hobby and then a new career. He became an instructor in the West Virginia fire schools, thus combining the two things he loved most: teaching and fire fighting. By 1937, Douglas’s reputation was such that Dean Philip Donnell of the College of Engineering at Oklahoma A&M offered him an instructor’s job in the new department of firemanship training. After some thought, Douglas and his wife, Sallie, decided to accept. They were not entirely sure they had made the right decision. Oklahoma in 1937 had the reputation of being one of the states most severely affected by the Great Depression. Everyone in the East had seen the pictures and tasted the grit blowing out of the Dust Bowl. As Douglas drove out from the green mountains of West Virginia, he expected to find a desert somewhere west of Arkansas. The fact that Stillwater was green and had trees made him secretly very thankful. In no time, it was home for the whole family. The position in the new department also pleased Douglas, and except for the war years 1942 to 1946, when he was fire marshal for Beech Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas, he was its mainstay. As a teacher, Douglas was loved and respected by his students because he took a personal interest in each one. As a researcher into the chemistry of fire suppression, he was nationally recognized, and he was proud of his appointment to the National Academy of Sciences’ Fire Research Conference. As an administrator, he was responsible for the Figure 34
54 IFSTA /FPP: THE FIRST 90 YEARS
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