Deputy Chief Ken Runyan, who worked part time for Colerain before joining Hamilton as a full-time firefighter, and and Driver Mike Jones, who was an Air Force firefighter before joining Hamilton’s force in 1993, were wistful about their departures, but said battling blazes is a young person’s job.
“Both good guys,” said Fire Chief Mark Mercer. “We see a lot of our guys as they retire, they take a lot of years of experience with them.”
Together, the pair have had careers of more than 68 years, according to Hamilton Professional Fire Fighters (IAFF) Local 20.
Runyan will now be working full time as a fire inspector in Washington Township in suburban Dayton.
After “37 total years, I’m still doing it,” Runyan said. “I’m just not actively fighting fire, I’m just doing fire inspections.”
How will he celebrate the career milestone?
“I’m just reflecting on the 33 years that I did there. That’s enough for me,” he said. After a brief vacation, he plans to resume working. Because he’s relatively young for a retirement, 55, his wife, Lisa, still works full-time, and he will be doing that, too.
Runyan tried to persuade Lisa “to let me ride across the country in my motorcycle while she was still working full-time, but that didn’t go over very well,” he said with a chuckle.
As he looks back on his Hamilton career, he says he most will remember “the professionalism. Knowing that I was coming into a new life with Hamilton was exciting.”
“I did it for the excitement. I got paid to do a job that a lot of people do for free,” Runyan said. “I enjoyed training, I enjoyed putting out fires. There’s a purpose for this work, and that’s what I’m going to miss.”
Jones, driver of Engine 24 likewise, won’t be doing something entirely different from his Hamilton job: He’ll be driving an ambulance for Cincinnati Medical Transport, taking people to medical appointments.
“It’s a young guy’s job,” Jones said. “At 57 years old, “You don’t need to be fighting on the roof with four inches of snow and fire down below, and a chain saw in hand, trying to cut a hole” in the building to access the fire.
People today are better educated about how to prevent fires, such as being more careful with live Christmas trees and not leaving things burning on stoves, Jones said. “But you still have fires. Some of them are arson-related, some of them are accidentals. And some of them are real heartbreakers.”
“I don’t think any firefighter would ever call themselves a hero. I know people call us heroes all the time, but we never look at it like that,” Jones said. “We’re trained to do what we do, and we take pride in what we do.”
The worst thing about the job is “there’s always the possibility you might not come home,” he said, noting the death of Patrick Wolterman while fighting an arson fire that devastated the department.
Jones, who graduated with the Hamilton High School Class of 1983 and won the baseball state championship as a third baseman the same day, wants to doing more singing — he double-majored in business and music in college before joining the Air Force, and spending time with his wife Anne, daughter Hannah and son Jacob and their spouses, and grandkids David and Lydia.
Jones has sung at Hamilton’s Operation Pumpkin and September 11 memorial observances, and regularly sings at church.
For Runyan, the best thing about being a firefighter is “the freedom of when you come into work, you don’t know what’s going to happen that day,” he said. “There’s no rut. You never know what’s going to happen when the alarm goes off. And just knowing that every day’s going to be different keeps your excitement up.”
The downside? Working 24-hour shifts, meaning if you’re scheduled to work that day, you miss a good number of family events and holidays, he said.
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