Meeting Highlights: Greg Ellingham brought Liberty Casarez, the new Community Relations gal at Findlay.  Heidi Greenlee came for Matt and wore his name tag, it was good to see her. Ray Carlson announced Wayne Wolfe has to resign  and AJ announced we would meet at the Prescott Area Shelter Services to paint picnic tables for the PASS Program.

 

Richard Fernandez from Yavapai College – reminded everyone about the food drive at Rotary the morning of Halloween for the Yavapai Rotoract Club’s Trick or Treat So Others Can Eat.

 

Great Extractions: Greg Raskin slaughtered us as the SGT. Poor Sarah paid out over $28. Everyone with a pin on had to pay a buck.  It was torturous.  ☹

 

Our Speaker for Last Meeting was Conrad Jackson, a 14-year veteran of Prescott Fire Department, with 20 years fighting wildland fires, and 30 years in the Prescott community. Jackson has spent the past decade scanning old department slides and photographs into digital form, and a couple of years ago, wrote a book about Arizona’s oldest fire department.

 

Founded in 1885, the Prescott Fire Department began with four 25-man volunteer companies, the Dudes, the Toughs, the Mechanics Hook & Ladders, and the O.K.s. These 100 men reflected both the common man and the leaders of the region. Over the years, their numbers would include governors-to-be F.A. Tritle and Thomas Campbell, business leaders H.D. Aitken and A.A. “Tony” Johns, and numerous members of the Goldwater family. The department and its community survived the great fire of July 14, 1900, as well as the loss of 19 of its own Granite Mountain Hotshots on June 30, 2013. The Prescott Fire Department would go from a volunteer department to a fully paid department of 80 firefighters, operating out of five stations and covering an area of 40 square miles.