Photos and content courtesy of Fire Chief Chris Osecky
For 100 years, the Mount Morris Community Volunteer Fire Company has been built on a simple idea: when a neighbor needs help, someone answers the call.
Founded in 1926, the company has survived and grown through generations of volunteers who gave their time, labor and often a little sleep to protect their community. For many families, the fire department became a family tradition. Some members can trace decades of combined service through parents, grandparents and children.
A new monument listing the charter members of the department will now stand in front of the firehouse.
The company’s history is also reflected in the equipment that has served Mount Morris. What began with leather buckets eventually progressed to a 1929 Howe-Sheldon truck costing $3,500 and, over the decades, to modern apparatus costing well over $200,000. Each truck represents not only a technological change in fire fighting, but also the fundraising, planning and community support required to put it in the station.
The current firehouse, completed in 1967 with an addition in 1988, is another example of that volunteer spirit. Members often worked all day at their regular jobs before coming to the firehouse at night to help build it. According to one longtime family story, the project lasted about a year — and by the end, the firefighters were apparently in danger of being divorced.
The humor may have changed little over the years, but the commitment has remained remarkably consistent.
After a century, the Mount Morris Community Volunteer Fire Company is more than a building, a fleet of trucks or a roster of names. It is something passed from one generation to the next — a community institution entrusted temporarily to each generation with the expectation that it will be handed forward ready for the next 100 years.
Today’s members of the department celebrating the 100th anniversary.
A previous generation of Mt. Morris firefighters in 1967 when they moved into their current station.
