A century into White House Fire’s history, members keep tradition alive
By Jessica Oates
Six men sat around a table, sharing stories.
Together, they represented the latest generation of a Hamilton institution: the White Horse Fire Company. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the company, which will celebrate its first century of existence on Saturday, May 10 at the Yardville VFW. The 100th anniversary celebration will include live music and food. Admission will be available at the door, and all proceeds will benefit the White Horse Volunteer Fire Company.
“It is a true brotherhood,” said Woody Emmons, Chairman of the 100th Anniversary Committee. Emmons has been part of the company for 42 years, 19 of which were spent as a volunteer.
The other firefighters around the table nodded. In addition to Emmons, Company President and Fire Police Captain Tim Ostopuck, Board Vice President Dave Barlow, Company Deputy Chief Anthony Innes, and Trustee Jim Berkeyheiser, all of whom have served as volunteers, and Career Captain Chris Valyo were present.
Emmons continued, “We eat together, sleep together, and work together. We even spend holidays together. We know each other’s families, and it’s rare that anything happens within our families that we don’t share. That’s what happens when you spend 24 hours together.”
Until 1991, the company was made up entirely of volunteers, with an exception of a few paid drivers. Fire companies in other towns are now almost entirely staffed by paid, career firefighters. White Horse, on the other hand, has volunteers it can rely on during the night, and a few that are available during the day, too, Emmons said.
“Employers used to be more understanding, and recognize that if you were paged, you had to go serve your community,” Emmons said. “Most employers didn’t have a problem with you leaving to go, and some of the volunteers were in business for themselves, so they had the flexibility to leave if they had to. But it really is a different world now. I believe that there was a time when we could say we were a volunteer company with supplemental career firefighters—now, it is reversed.”
As with any other volunteer organization, many White Horse Fire Company members also have full time jobs, spouses and children. They could be taking their kids to baseball practice or dance lessons when an emergency strikes, and they’d have to drop everything they were doing.
“I truly believe that the community doesn’t always understand the level of commitment these guys have to the community,” Emmon said. “Of course, people appreciate it when you show up, but I don’t think they realize what the volunteers have given up. At some point in our lives we have all given up spending the holidays with our families, gotten up at 3 a.m. when it is 6 degrees outside and snowing, rip the cardboard off our windshields and get going.”
Being prepared, explained Emmons, is part of the commitment. Firefighters, for example, prepare for bad weather by putting cardboard over their windshields so that they can easily pull it off without having to waste time scraping ice.
“When our pagers go off, we have to go,” Emmons said. “Saving time saves lives. We can’t be scraping ice.”
Valyo, the career captain at White Horse Fire Company, said firefighting tradition such as White Horse’s continues because it is passed down through generations. He said many of the firefighters in the company joined because they were inspired by their fathers, who were also firefighters. Valyo’s father was a firefighter. So was Emmons’. Board of Commissioners vice president Dave Barlow has two sons who work as volunteers for other companies.
Jim Berkeyheiser, the oldest member of the company at 91 years old, followed in his father’s foosteps as well. Berkeyheiser’s dad was one of the original members of White Horse Volunteer Fire Company 100 years ago.
“I was involved long before I officially joined in 1948,” he said. “I went to the parades and tagged along with my father since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Somewhere, I have a picture of myself practicing a drill I had learned from him when I was only 6 years old. At one point in my career, I lived half a block away from here. I usually ran over to the station in time for the first truck.”
Berkeyheiser, an active member on the board of trustees, looks back upon his long career fondly. He retired in the mid-1980s, when he started to feel like he was in the way.
“I didn’t want to take the hose away from the younger, quicker guys…so I would come along and watch,” Berkeyheiser said. “Eventually it no longer behooved me to go on calls.”
The company’s oldest active member, George Balog still drives and fights fires at the age of 68. Balog was also a TCNJ professor of music, and still performs in the orchestra. His son Michael is a career firefighter with the company, and his other son is also a firefighter in another district.
A lot has changed since Berkeyheiser—or even Balog—started with the company. Of course, there’s the changing technology and equipment, on top of the shifting nature of Hamilton Township. But White Horse Volunteer Fire Company also has had a change in mission. WHVFC was established as an engine company. Its responsibility was simply to “put water on the fire”; in other words, to fight fires and rescue people, if necessary.
That changed in 1992, when company members decided it was important to be trained in emergency medical services.
“It really turned out to be the best decision they made,” Deputy Chief Anthony Innes said. “We all became EMTs, or first responders. We went through classes to be able to provide the same emergency services as the people on ambulances, minus the fact that we do not transport people. We usually get there before the ambulance does. We have saved people’s lives with a defibrillator, people in cardiac arrest, and we’ve learned over the years that people of the community are surprised but delighted that we can be there for them and make a difference in their families’ lives in this way.”
The company now also responds to motor vehicle accidents, as well as accidents on the water. It has a boat that it can use if someone were to get into trouble on Gropp’s Lake, a short distance from WHVFC’s station on Locust Avenue, just off White Horse Avenue and the White Horse Circle. While incidents on the lake have been few, the fire company is also capable of assisting with situations on the Delaware River, should they be called upon to assist. The company has responded to floods as far away as Long Branch in the past.
The newest thing the company has been involved in is “special ops,” including high or low angle rescues. If someone cleaning windows on scaffolding had a situation and needed help coming down, the firefighters would be capable of assisting them in a high angle rescue. If people drove over the embankment on Interstate 195, the firefighters would use ropes and pulley systems to perform a low angle rescue and bring the people to safety without causing them additional bodily harm.
Innes pointed out that one of the newer things in the industry is sending the firefighters to the site of a fire to act as a rescue squad for firefighters that may become trapped in their efforts to rescue people. That crew would only act if something goes wrong during the initial response to the call.
Today, the firefighters’ basic equipment consists of two engines, vehicles for the chief and deputy chief and a utility vehicle for actions such as pumping basements. White Horse Fire doesn’t have firedogs, but it does have a pole.
Though they have had to turn to career firefighters to help keep the company running, the members of White Horse Fire Company say they are going nowhere. There is no doubt in their minds that the company will be proudly serving the community years from now.
“We have always been pretty lucky to have our fair share of volunteers,” Emmons said.
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