Liberty Township Fire Department honors Fred Frantz for 63 years of service
By SYDNEY KENT
Firefighters at the Liberty Township Fire Department gathered together last month to celebrate Fred Frantz’s 63 years of faithful service.
Frantz joined the volunteer department in July of 1961. It was a practical decision for him at the time — he could have joined in January when he turned 21, but fees were due in July. At the time, the landscape of the field looked far different.
Firefighters did not have access to the large assortment of protective gear, or equipment, that was available to fight fires in the early 1960s.
Teresa Gerwig, one of Frantz’s beloved five children, recalled a memory of her father in typical average clothing and footwear — heading straight into a barn fire.
“I got home from town, and he had been paged to a fire. He walked into the fire in plain clothes and waited on the fire truck because he was seeing what was happening inside. They called them “smoke-eaters” back then, going in without masks. If you didn’t have your coat, you didn’t have a coat. You just went and took care of what you needed to do.”
Frantz recalled a repurposed gas tanker, which was one of the first enclosed tankers that he had ever used.
“Our first enclosed tanker was an old gas truck,” Frantz laughed. “They hooked all the different compartments to the tank up to it, and you had to be careful how you filled it because one compartment could fill faster.”
This was still a major improvement from what Frantz was accustomed to before.
“The first tanker I remember is an open cab,” Frantz said. “The tank didn’t have a top on it, you would go to stop and that water would slush over.”
Over his entire career, the largest fire he faced was on Dec. 12, 1992, when the Southern Wells Elementary School erupted into flames. Frantz was one of 160 firefighters in 18 fire departments required to stop the fire, which took over 16 hours to extinguish.
In the last 25 years, fire departments statewide have struggled to find volunteers willing or able to help, and Liberty Township has not been excluded from this change. Years after a knee replacement surgery, Frantz has continued to stay on at the department and even go out to fires he couldn’t physically fight, even providing advice that ultimately stopped one of the fires.
“The guys out there have been awesome in making sure he attends the meetings and still includes him in it all,” Gerwig added. “They kept teasing him that they would make him chief again because it was easier.
Frantz smiled proudly as he recalled working alongside his friends and firefighters cutting wood to sell on the weekends in an effort to buy cement for the floor they poured themselves. Over decades of volunteering, camaraderie, friendship, and family were forged.
Frantz gave tribute to the long list of names that helped create the Liberty Township Fire Department, noting that most people have now passed away.
“It was very much a family,” Gerwig said. “If somebody needed something, everybody helped take care of each other.”
“It still is,” Frantz added firmly.
sydney@news-banner.com
