“Baby it’s Cold Outside” is a song written by Frank Loesser in 1944. It is a duet in which a man attempts to convince a woman that they should stay together for a romantic night, since the weather is cold and the trip home would be difficult.
Let’s focus on the last part of that sentence, with the ‘cold weather’ and ‘a difficult trip home’. This week we start the story of then Marine Corps Private First Class Arthur E. "Bud" Wedemeyer, Jr., the son of the Mayor of Larkspur at that time, and later a fireman at two bay area military bases and in the Larkspur FD. Wedemeyer fought in one of the nastiest battles in U.S. Marine Corps history, starting this week in 1950 in Korea on November 27, and lasting for the next 15 days. The word ‘cold’ does not begin to describe the weather, and the description of the ‘...trip home would be difficult’ are also weak in painting the picture of the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. Many of the American and UN soldiers never made it home, along with the enemy dead. See our Special Recognition & Award Recipients Section for this fascinating story on Staff Sergeant Arthur E. "Bud" Wedemeyer, U.S. Marine Corps. “Firemen are going to get killed. When they join the department they face that fact. When a man becomes a fireman his greatest act of bravery has been accomplished. What he does after that is all in the line of work. They were not thinking of getting killed when they went where death lurked. They went there to put the fire out, and got killed. Firefighters do not regard themselves as heroes because they do what the business requires.” -- Chief Edward F. Croker, FDNY, speaking upon the death of a deputy chief and four firefighters in February of 1908.
This week we are sharing the history of a tragic fire in San Rafael on May 21, 1950, when two firemen were killed. Fireman William "Sonny" Bottini, and Aubrey E. "Jack" Miller died that day at a large working fire in a used car dealership on Fourth St. Both were veterans of World War II, and had been with the department for less than five years. They survived the war, but died fighting another enemy - fire. See our Major Fires section under structure fires in 1950 for the story and video, and also the Line of Duty Deaths section. Marin County Arson Investigator Charles I. Daniels, Jr. is featured in the story, and we've also started his biography under the biography section. The population of Marin County in 1963 was roughly 150,000, and the main part of the Marin County Civic Center had been completed only a year prior. Martin Luther King had delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington by civil rights groups a few months prior, and the Vietnam War was escalating. The English musical group “The Beatles” has exploded in popularity in the U.K., having released their first album earlier in the year. It would be another few months before their first trip to America.
Most Marin fire departments still had a strong dependence on volunteer firemen – the name “firefighter” would not become the norm for several decades. Many departments were also hiring more paid firemen through the decade as the population grew. Following several years of planning, the first Fire Science class was offered at College of Marin in the fall of 1963; “Introduction to Fire Science.” While two-way radio systems were in use, portables and personal paging systems like Plectrons were only beginning to be used. Early Plectron models were expensive, starting at about $110 dollars, or over $800 dollars each in 2015 dollars. So, most departments still used fire horns to summon volunteers, including Kentfield. On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. A little over three weeks later, the College of Marin Gymnasium would burn down, starting in the late afternoon of December 16. Read about this fire in our Major Fires section, and see some great photos shared by photographer Paul Penna. |
AuthorOur Blog announces new site content, and gives the context of the topic and it's relationship to fire service history. Written by Bill Lellis & Paul Smith Archives
August 2022
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