RESPONDING … Having just received a call requesting an investigation into a possible natural gas leak, Montpelier Fire Chief Dail Fritch heads out to answer the call. (PHOTO BY TIMOTHY KAYS, STAFF)
(Story originally appeared September 26th, 2018)
By: Timothy Kays
Item #13 on the agenda of the Montpelier Village Council at their September 17 meeting was a shocker. That business item called for Council to approve or reject the retirement of Montpelier Fire Chief Dail Fritch, effective January 3, 2020, a measure that was approved without dissent.
Currently, Chief Fritch has 45 years of dedicated service to the fire and hazardous material safety of the Village of Montpelier, the last 28 years in the capacity of chief. The last 23 of those 28 years has seen him as the first and only full-time fire chief in the history of the village.
What exactly differentiates a full-time fire chief from a part-timer or a volunteer? Plenty, but a lot is centered around daytime availability. “I do fire extinguisher training during the week with different industries,” Chief Fritch cited as an example. “I get calls. Yesterday, I got called out to the Turnpike for a hazmat, which ended up being an ink spill coming out of the back of a trailer.”
“Things happen during the daytime, and right now I don’t have anybody on here that can leave their work, take care of that, then go back. I did that for five years. That’s why I finally said that this job is either going to be full-time, or I’m going to stay here where I work. I worked down at Hause Machines; I had 25 years in down there. From 1990 to 1995, I was doing both…40-some hours down there, and come back up here and do 20 or more every week. My wife said, ‘This isn’t going to fly.’ Fortunately they made this full-time.”
Chief Fritch is married to his wife of 48 years, Anna. Together, they have two children and five grandchildren. He might seem like a lifelong fixture of Locomotive Land, but Chief Fritch is actually a Fulton county import. “Originally, I’m from Wauseon;” he said, “…that’s where I was born. My family lived in Tedrow for a few years.”
“We lived there until I was in fifth grade, and we moved into Wauseon. My dad was always in the grocery business, and ran a grocery store. He had Rogers Wabash Grocery in Wauseon, right on the Wabash Railroad. Sterling’s was the big grocery store chain at that time.”
“He sold his business there in Wauseon, and we went to Maumee for a couple years. We went from Wauseon, to Maumee, to Montpelier. He took over the Sterling Store here, and that’s how we came to Montpelier. We came here in 1961; I was a freshman in school. I graduated here in 1965, and in 1966, I enlisted in the Navy; I was in the Seabees. I made two tours in Vietnam in the 60’s, and got out ‘69.”
The way to a career in fire services was not a straight and easy one for Dail Fritch. “After I came home from the service,” he recalled, “…a lot of my friends were on the fire department. I lived out of town; at that time, you couldn’t live out of town and belong to the fire department. You had to live within town. I moved in town where we still live today…I think it was 1972 or 1973 when we moved down there on Monroe Street and bought the house there.”
“I probably had a half a dozen or more friends that were on the fire department. They convinced me that that was a place to be, so on October 9, 1973; I became a member of the fire department. My career in the fire department was almost over within that first year that I was on, though.” That statement was not made lightly, nor was the recollection that followed.
“On September 29, 1974,” Chief Fritch recalled, “…myself and Ron Fogel were in an accident with a fire truck. It was out here on County Road 10 and County Road M, responding to a barn fire in the tanker. Ron just lived down the street from me, and this was about 1 PM on a Sunday. I saw him back out of his drive when I was coming out of the house, so I waited for him to pick me up. The fire station was up here at the city hall at that time.”
“He asked me if he could go ahead and drive, because if he’s driving you don’t really get smoky, and you don’t get messed up. He was going to go to a picnic later that afternoon. If he hadn’t asked me, I probably would have been driving instead of him.”
“We were on our way out, and we got hit in the intersection. It threw him out of the truck, and I rolled in the truck…lying on the front seat. I don’t know how many times the truck rolled over, but we ended up in a field out there.”
“At that time, the funeral homes still had the ambulances. There was one fatality right there at the scene; the passenger in the car that hit us was killed. They brought us into the hospital. They were asking Ron questions and I was answering them in the other room, not knowing what’s going on. They rushed him to Toledo, because there was no Life Flight in 1974. He had medical complications, went into a coma and was like that until 1995 when he passed away in a nursing home facility in Green Springs, Ohio.”
“From that day forward from when we had that accident, my mind was, ‘Now I’ve got to do the work for two guys.’ He was more or less the guy that asked me to be on the fire department, to come get involved. So from then on, I had to do what I thought he would do, and do my job too. I was doing two guys’ jobs for years. That was my mentality of the fire service.”
The firefighter that would eventually become chief took on practically every assignment that he could. “On through the years,” he recalled, “…I did about everything, except Secretary. We always had a good Secretary. The Mayor, Steve Yagelski, was a Secretary when he was on the fire department, so we always had a good Secretary. I was Treasurer, then Lieutenant, Captain, Assistant Chief, and then Chief in September of 1990. They made it a full time position in 1995.”
Over the last 45 years, Chief Fritch has attended trainings across the country, which he sees as a benefit to the village, as well as an opportunity for himself. “I have been able to travel. I’ve gone to school out in Pueblo, Colorado, and gone to school in Beaumont, Texas. We’ve gone to hazmat seminars in Chicago and in Baltimore. I also went to school in Daytona, Florida.”
His retirement date is more than a year in the offing, which will give him and Anna time to discuss what to do with his time once he hangs up his turnout gear. In the meantime, the thoughts of retirement priorities are a bit on the daunting side. “It’s easier to talk about right now,” Chief Fritch said. “You come back next year this time, and it’s going to be a lot tougher. I know there’s got to be a life after the fire department…I’ve just got to find it.
What does Chief Fritch consider to be some of the changes for which he is most proud? “I don’t know,” he said. “There’s really one thing in particular…by having a full time fire chief, it allows that person to be available during the daytime hours. They’re always available after four or five o’clock when that person got off work.”
“I can do things like…I’m a certified fire safety inspector, so I can go out doing inspections during the daytime hours. I’m a certified fire instructor, which I do at the Bryan Fire Academy. I’m an instructor over there. That’s helped me bring back things here. We have training every Thursday here, so it made available training for guys that worked nights.”
“Before, their training was always on Saturdays, and you took away that Saturday from that person. This way they come Thursday morning from 9:00 till 11:00, or Thursday night from 7:00 to 9:00. That made that training available during the daytime for the guys that worked nights, and they didn’t have to spend the extra day out of their week.”
“There’s all kinds of calls that come in. Maybe it’s an odor investigation. Sometimes we have things go on, like somebody hits a gas line and they want somebody down there right away. I respond to that, and then decide whether the rest of the department is going to be needed or not. I’m considered on duty 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.”
Looking back on his tenure, Chief Fritch added, “When I took over, we were down on manpower. After a period of time, I was able to get people on the department. Right now we’re at 29; 34 is the most we’ve ever had on the department, so right now we’re sitting just as good as any other department in the county for manpower.”
“Volunteerism has changed through the years. People seem to be busy busier than they were 45 years ago you know, and just have a hard time making time to volunteer for anything. Fortunately, last year we had five new people come on. We may go several years before we have another one or two…you just don’t know. It’s not like people are knocking our doors down to get in here to volunteer.”
When asked what he would like to be remembered for with the Montpelier Fire Department, Chief Fritch said, “That I was an easy person to work with maybe. I always thought that I was a good listener. If somebody had something, that I’ve listened to them and didn’t react right off the cuff.”
“I’ve always told everybody when they get on here that if we have a problem here, I’m the guy that’s got to fix it. We can’t leave something go and fester and get out of control. You’ve got to come to me. We’ve got to sit down, and we’ve got to talk.”
One of the innovations installed in the Montpelier Fire Department by Chief Fritch is something that carries a big impact upon the smallest citizens of the village. Every fall, Chief Fritch and members of the Montpelier Fire Department can be seen at the Montpelier Elementary School, where they teach fire safety to the young kids.
During the summers, you can find them working with kids going into Kindergarten as a part of the Safety Town program. Still, there is something more, something very special and unique to Montpelier.
“I came up with that idea,” said Chief Fritch about the program of Christmas present delivery by the Montpelier Fire Department. “I was looking on the internet one day, and I saw where some firefighters were doing this. We have an old fire truck that we kept, a 1953 GMC.”
“We started decorating that, then advertising for anyone who wanted to have their presents delivered during Christmas time to bring their presents up here, and would deliver them for them. We did that, but then we had a little engine trouble with it…we blew the engine. So we start decorating the aerial ladder the last three years. Just to see the faces on these kids, you know…that’s what it’s all about.”
The phone on Chief Fritch’s desk begins to ring. He apologizes, and then takes the call. Someone smells natural gas, and is calling to report their concern. Chief Fritch assures the caller that he is on the way, and heads for his truck.
A call made to a department without a full-time chief would have to go through the system, then be answered by whoever can leave work to respond to the call for help, a process that might result in a significant delay.
The citizens of Montpelier might not realize it, but they have been spoiled for the last 23 years. They have had a full-time chief by the name of Dail Fritch at the helm of their fire department, something for which they can be both proud and grateful.
Timothy can be reached at tim@thevillagereporter.com