By Jay Spenciner

Special to The News

I recently received my 25-year pin from the Bridgton Fire Department. I’m very happy and proud to have received it, but is it really that many years? I decided to check out some really long-term members. All were interviewed separately, but combined to be more interesting. All are members of the Bridgton Fire Department.

JS: How long have you been a member of the BFD?

Bob Pierce: I’ve been a member for 60 years.

Paul Field, Jr.: I’m in my 36th year.

Nathan Frank: 38 years.

JS: How come you joined in the first place? Was it a family tradition?

Bob Pierce: They needed help and I was available. I was also small and they could shove me in places that the bigger guys couldn’t get to.

Paul Field Jr.: My parents were active in it, so I grew up around it. My grandfather actually started the South Bridgton station. I’m guessing maybe in the 1960s.

Nathan Frank: I thought it would be something nice to do so I got involved.

JS: What do you like best about the BFD?

Bob Pierce: The people. I’ve learned a lot from them. I hope they’ve learned a lot from me. I enjoy the newest people too.

Paul Field Jr.: Being able to help people. Serving them when people are in need. There are some benefits like getting to play with the big, fancy trucks. 

JS: Men are like boys except they play with bigger toys.

Nathan Frank: It’s one big happy family and they’re all willing to help if you need help.

JS: You’ve been on thousands of calls. Do one or two stand out to you after all these years?

Bob Pierce: There’s one…that never came out of my head. It is a lady in South Bridgton who perished in a fire. That stuck in my mind because she was close. I was within 10 feet of her in a fully-involved fire. Ten more feet and she would have been outside. Between her and us was a hole that was her cellar.

Paul Field Jr.: Two stand out that happened back to back. One was a garage on 302 that burned. It was a big, hot fire. Oil barrels were exploding. A week later, a house on Route 117 burned. As I got there, the barn was fully involved. The “L” was burning up to the kitchen. As I pulled in with Engine 4, a police officer and two civilians were helping the homeowner out of the house through a window. By the time we finished, we saved the main part of the house.

Nathan Frank: My own house. A tree coming down on it. I went to my own house for a call.

JS: I remember we had some work details at your house. Nathan Frank: That’s what I mean by one big happy family. Also, on a New Year’s Day, at a fire, Tommie and I went in. He carried the cat and I carried the dog out. That would have been an animal that died in the fire.

JS: I’m going to answer my own question. Two calls stand out to me. A few months after I joined, I went to a traffic accident on Christmas Eve. A pick-up had crashed into a tree. Presents were scattered all over the road. The mother was dead, but the child was okay. It still bothers me.

I was busy with paperwork at my desk when I heard Sebago Fire appeal for interior fire fighters to help with a trailer fire. I went directly to the scene, put on an air pack and was teamed up with a fire fighter from Standish. A young boy was missing and they needed us to search the basement. As we crawled into the basement, I glanced up at the ceiling which was fully ablaze. A thought went through my mind that if the ceiling came down, I would die. I stopped thinking about that. We did our search and found nothing. It turned out the boy got on the school bus unseen. Thank God!

JS: What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in your years here?

Bob Pierce: There were changes like the SCBA (self-contained breathing apparatus). At first, there were only 15-minute bottles and the only place to get them filled was Portland.

Paul Field Jr.: When I first joined, we mostly fought fires. Usually, if we went, there was smoke and flames. Now, most of our calls do not involve fire. There are alarms or assisting people with this or that, traffic control, storm control. We do a lot of community service.

Nathan Frank: New gear, people, trucks and working conditions. We work a lot safer now.