George Lenhardt speaks, as Fire Marshal James Greschak and Lenhardt’s wife, Bonnie, look on during the Aug. 12, 2015 event to dedicate the drill tower at Dempster Fire Service Training Center in his honor.
By Amy Macintyre
Looming over the Captain John T. Dempster Sr. Fire Service Training Center in Lawrenceville is a 5-story fire drill tower made to resemble an apartment building with a metal fire escape on one side and balconies on the other.
A new bronze plaque hangs on the front of the building. On Aug. 12, the Mercer County Fire Chief’s Association dedicated the tower to Hamilton resident George F. Lenhardt, honoring the retired fire marshal’s 40 years of service to Mercer County.
This fall, a new class of future Mercer County firefighters will run up and down the towers staircases in full gear, extinguishing fires on the fourth floor, perform search and rescue and repelling down the brick façade.
Lenhardt thought that he could slip quietly into retirement after serving as Mercer County Fire Marshal for 33 years and Assistant Fire Marshal for 7 years prior. He retired on Jan. 1 and quickly fell into his new job as full-time babysitter for his 2-year-old granddaughter, Mimzy.
His successor and long-time friend and colleague James Greschak had other plans for Lenhardt. Greschak and a committee secretly planned a retirement celebration in his honor. Bonnie, Lenhardt’s wife, was constructing picture boards and hiding them under the bed where she knew he’d never look.
Greschak stopped by his house just two days before the dinner was planned to take place to break the news.
“He said, ‘Don’t get mad at me. I know you told me you didn’t want it, but we’re giving you a dinner,” Lenhardt remembers. “I said, ‘No no no no no!”
“He told me personally a number of months before he retired that he didn’t want anything,” Greschak said. “You know what? We didn’t listen.”
On May 1, more than 150 people gathered in the West Trenton Ballroom to celebrate Lenhardt’s career. His involvement in the fire community has spanned 55 years from when he joined the Colonial Volunteer Fire Company in Hamilton at 18.
For Lenhardt, there was never a question that he would become a fireman. Like his father and six brothers, firefighting was “just something you did,” he said. While volunteering at Colonial, he worked as a mechanic at Reedman and in 1974, he became fire inspector in Hamilton. In 1977, he was hired by the City of Trenton as a paid fireman, where he worked until 2004 when he retired from the position.
Lenhardt is also the past president of the Mercer County Fireman’s Association, past president of the Mercer County Fire Chiefs Association, past vice president, founder and charter member of the Mercer County Prevention and Protection Association, past vice president of the Hamilton Township Fire Chiefs Association, and several more ranking offices within Mercer County.
At the Colonial Volunteer Fire Company in Hamilton, a few doors down from his home on Kuser Road, he is the past chief and past president, along with other rankings and committee chairmanships. After 55 years with the company, he doesn’t see himself leaving anytime soon. He continues to attend meetings and is still participating on committees.
In his kitchen, the fire scanner is still blaring the chatter of the area fire company’s broadcasts. Even with all the titles he’s held over the years, the proclamations and the accolades, he’s humble. He says his biggest achievements in life are his wife Bonnie and his daughter Rachel.
Lenhardt met Bonnie through a Corvette car club they both belonged to in 1979. Bonnie’s father was a fire chief in the South Jersey town she grew up in, so she knew some of the demands and dangers of his job, but she said she didn’t know exactly what she was signing up for when the two began dating.
As fire chief, there is no telling when the next call will be. They said there were times when the call would come during weddings or birthday parties, and they had to head straight home so he could get changed and go to the scene.
“It’s all part of the responsibility,” he said.
The couples’ wedding was no exception. He and Bonnie married at the Colonial Fire Station, where one end was decorated as a chapel and the other the reception space. Lenhardt’s brother Joe was the assistant fire fighter at the time, but that night, he was the best man.
No one told the newlyweds at the time, but during the ceremony, the dispatcher was trying to track down Lenhardt.
“They called the firehouse as a last resort, and they said he’s a little busy, he’s getting married. And they were like, well, get the assistant. You’re out of luck, he’s the best man,” Bonnie said.
The police were able to assist in the investigation on their wedding night, but for their first anniversary, Lenhardt would not be so lucky.
“We had a house full of people,” Bonnie said. “He’s cooking dinner and he got a call.”
“We had taken the frozen top layer of the wedding cake out of the freezer, and I went to a fire in Princeton, and when I got home the cake was in the garbage,” Lenhardt said.
For the next few years, every November 28, a call came on their wedding anniversary. Finally, before their fifth wedding anniversary, Bonnie remembers telling Greschak not to make any plans for that date because she wanted to spend one anniversary with her husband. As assistant fire marshal, Greschak agreed.
“It happens.” Lenhardt said, “It’s a job. I signed on for the job, and I wanted to take the job so it just–” Bonnie interrupted him. “As a result I have a lot of beautiful jewelry,” she said, with a laugh.
This year the couple will be spending their 34th anniversary together with no interruptions, at least not from the fire department.
“I know what went into getting up at 2 o’clock in the morning and getting dressed and going out in the snow to a fire,” Bonnie says, reflecting on his career. “I was just happy to see him go out on a very positive note with the appreciation of a lot of people for a job that well done.”
The dinner itself was not the only surprise of the evening. During the dinner, a model of the fire drill tower was revealed, and it was announced that the building would be named in his honor.
“We wanted a permanent and lasting tribute to him that would endure forever,” Greschak said. “Everyone who trains there, whether it be the new recruits or the seasoned firemen, they’re going to walk up to that fire tower and see his name on the plaque.”
On Aug. 12, members of the fire community gathered on the drill grounds of Captain John T. Dempster Sr. Fire Service Training Center where the plaque was revealed.
Director of the Mercer County Fire School James McCann was happy to see the drill tower named after someone he believes is a role model to new recruits and seasoned firemen alike.
“He’s been an example of what it is to dedicate your life to something, and he took it beyond the doors of his own firehouse to the county level where he had influence and he helped better the fire service,” McCann said.
As Lenhardt eases in to his retirement, he and Bonnie are looking forward to taking more trips to their favorite spots in Florida, and of course babysitting the grandchildren. They just welcomed a new grandson, Hunter, and they are excited for him to join Mimzy in their grandparent “daycare.”
Lenhardt said the one thing he’ll miss about the fire service is the comradery of the fire community in Mercer County.
“The fire service is unlike any other profession. The members of the service have a true passion for the job,” Greschak said. “It’s not just a job it’s a calling. It’s a brotherhood.
“George has always been there for me. We stopped being friends a long time ago and became brothers.”
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