Forty years of faithful service

Bill Elliott

Grannie Annie and I were privileged to attend a retirement party (celebration!) for Fire Chief Bill Elliott of the Red Willow Western Rural Fire Department this past weekend. Bill served for over 40 years in many roles as he worked his way up to Chief. Forty years is the entire history of the RWRFD since it was formed to serve the rural communities and empty spaces of most of the area of Red Willow County.

Actually it wasn’t always that way in Red Willow County. For the first half of my life and earlier it was the McCook Volunteer Fire Department that responded to fire calls out in the county. Actually, neighbors would respond to grass fires and more but a professional trained force was clearly needed. Then the McCook department lobbied to become a full time paid department and took on the added responsibilities of ambulance service for most of the County and dropped the responsibility of responding to fire calls outside the McCook City limits. What to do for the rural property owners that weren’t then covered? A rural fire department was then formed with a governing board and taxing authority. The first fire chief was Gene Wagoner and one of his green hands was Mr. Bill Elliott.

Your humble columnist had returned from an Air Force career to take over the family farm and was prevailed upon to volunteer and become a rural fire fighter. What did I know about fighting fires? In truth, not much, but with local training and attending the annual statewide three-day fire school learned the ropes of the business. At that time there was a somewhat tenuous connection to aviation of the RWWRFD as our trucks and fire hall was located in the unused, after the airlines temporarily left McCook, so the Airport Fire Station was available.

I then served for over 20 years under Chief Wagoner and then Chief Elliott. There were lots of changes. We upgraded our equipment and moved to a new larger fire hall just on the outskirts of McCook. Along the way I became the training officer and one of our new recruits was Mark Harpham who is now the McCook Fire Department Chief. At the urging of Grannie Annie, who protested that this old guy bow out of the 24/7 fire calls due to my advancing age. It was hard to retire but you know the unit continued to do just fine without me. Such is life.

Then came a new opportunity that of collecting Household Hazardous Waste. Under Mr. Elliott our department was funded by various grants and the unit collected and disposed of hazardous waste from many communities throughout Southwest Nebraska.

Eventually additional training qualified the unit to be certified as the sole Hazmat Team serving a very large multi-state area. Sadly one of their most recent calls was the recovery of two casualties in the tragedy at the McCook Sewage plant where the community sadly lost two valuable City employees.

Due to ill health Chief Elliott was forced to retire after 40+ years of service. He leaves a great legacy that will continue to serve this area for years to come. I found it most interesting that representatives from a large number of neighboring fire units attended Mr. Elliott’s retirement ceremony in thanks for the great spirit of cooperation his units provided far and wide. Well done good and faithful servant!

You, dear readers may know that I spend as much time as possible at our wonderful City Airport. Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 Pandemic transit traffic through our airport has been considerably more sparse than normal. Still today (Monday) was a good day with a pretty good gaggle of general aviation aircraft coming for a fuel stop before traveling on to who knows where. I find most of the pilots that stop by are a friendly bunch easy to visit with especially if one offers complimentary remarks about their airplane. About all are happy to speak of where they are coming from and their next destination. Most passengers are interested in a potty break and maybe a cup of coffee or a cold soft drink.

Shelby at J&S Aviation bends over backwards to make their stop here a happy one with competitive-priced fuel, clean restrooms and a comfortable lounge. They also provide courtesy cars so that those who wish can get a bite to eat or shop downtown McCook.

Airport courtesy cars are a sometimes an adventure in themselves and our visitors get to drive rather ancient Cadillacs. The tradition is that for the use of the courtesy cars the user tops off the fuel tank before returning it to the airport. Some skip that kind act and I had to laugh at one enterprising operator that disabled the gas gages on his cars so that they read empty when the visitor hopped in to go somewhere. That worked because almost every user stopped off at the first gas station to assure that he had enough gas to go and found that they could only put in a quart or a gallon before the tank was full.

A continuing problem at our airport is that we have limited hangar space to serve the traveling public when they need to spend a night or two. Those transient aircraft are usually tied down securely on our spacious ramp but sometimes with our thunderstorms in summer that is a bit dicey too.

That brings me to another subject and that of a master plan for our airport. It is time to renew our McCook Airport master plan, which will be in effect for something like 25 years. What do we need to make our airport better into the future? For sure more hangar space for our transit traffic is one item. Some of our buildings are a bit shop worn and maybe could stand an attractive upgrade. We will be hiring a professional company to create our new plan and that is no small thing as a rough estimate is that it will require something like a $100,000 or more to create a plan that the FAA will approve. For whatever sum is settled on for the new contract there will be grant money available for about 90% of the project but still our ten percent will be a sizeable number to be included in a future city budget. Be assured that our airport advisory committee and the city staff will be prudent in establishing the required budget. That grant money by the way will come from a tax on aircraft fuel much like the tax on automobile gasoline that pays for the roads that we use.

That is the way I saw it.

Dick Trail