Honorary Member Of Fire Station No. 2 Receives Plaque
WARSAW — Winona Lake resident Tim Hunt was presented with a plaque at a special ceremony held at Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory Station No. 2 on Tuesday, Jan. 28.
Hunt has been showing up at the fire station every Tuesday for the past four and a half years.
“He’s been coming in — he’s always wanted to be a firefighter,” said Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory Public Information Officer Max Kinsey. “It started out with him coming by in the summer and helping us wash trucks. We told him, ‘Come in whenever you want,’ so he started coming in almost every Tuesday like clockwork.”
Brooke Carey, who is employed with Ferraro Behavioral Services out of Fort Wayne as a behavioral consultant, works with Hunt on social skills.
“This is his dream. It’s what he’s always wanted to do,” Carey said. “One of the first things we did is, I hooked (him) up with Max (Kinsey) and station 2. It hasn’t just been station 2 though that’s kind of adopted Tim – every station has taken him under their wing.”
“The reason we do this specifically is because he is getting older and has some dementia issues, and this place keeps his mind very, very active,” Carey said. “Max has done all kinds of things for training him, like paper training tests and doing things out in the field.”
“We got gear for him — he has his own coat,” Kinsey said. “He really just became part of us. He fits in really well with us. He started going on some calls with us — the low-risk calls. He’d jump in the truck with us and we’d take him around.”
Hunt kept asking when his graduation would be, Kinsey said.
“He knows that to be a firefighter you have to go through all this training and graduation, so we started giving him some testing and some physical things and we’d take him out to the training center,” Kinsey said. “He went through the whole process. He went through all the testing. He did everything we asked him to do.”
“He’s excited about it. He’s learning new things,” Carey said. “He’s hanging out with the guys. He’s one of the guys. They hassle him just like they do each other. It’s really cool.”
Kinsey said the firefighters all chipped in to purchase the plaque. The department held a graduation ceremony for Hunt during their Christmas party but did not have the plaque at that time.
On Tuesday, Captain Mike Brubaker presented the plaque to Hunt, who said, “Aww, you shouldn’t have done that, guys.”
Hunt’s cousin, Danny Fifer, retired in 2012 after 32 years of service with the Warsaw FD.
Hunt has been involved with family safety day events and goes with the department to schools for public education events.
“One thing that’s really difficult is finding natural supports for people in the community who aren’t paid to be there,” Carey said. “And he’s got that with these guys. That’s very unusual.”