Long-time firefighter retires from force

After serv­ing his coun­try and com­mu­nity, George “Butch” Gard­ner deserves a lit­tle relax­ation that will come with retirement.

Gard­ner announced his retire­ment from the Welling­ton Fire Dis­trict after 28 years of ser­vice, a deci­sion that was not eas­ily made.

“I love the vil­lage (of Welling­ton), loved my time on the fire depart­ment. I wish I could stay. I wanted to go 30 years, but with cer­tain health issues, I decided to hang it up,” Gard­ner said.

A native of Wake­man, Gard­ner attended high school at West­ern Reserve and found him­self mar­ried in 1964.

by ADAM FOX

Enter­prise reporter

Not long after the wed­ding, Gard­ner moved to Welling­ton in 1965, a vil­lage that despite his many trav­els, always called him back.

After being in town for around a year, Gard­ner enlisted in the Navy and soon found him­self on the sunny shores of San Diego.

“When I joined the Navy, I was sta­tioned in Coro­n­ado, Calif. Went to a lot of places, like Hawaii,” Gard­ner said.

Gard­ner was part of the U.S. Naval Con­struc­tion Bat­tal­ions, or Seabees, as they are often referred. The Seabee name is derived from the ini­tials of Con­struc­tion Bat­tal­ion (CB).

“We would go into an area and get it ready. We cleared loca­tions for bases, set up run­ways, things like that,” Gard­ner said.

“When we went to Hawaii, there was an Army Reserve train­ing event that we did,” Gard­ner said.

It is said that mil­i­tary men have the want to serve in their blood, and if Gardener’s blood­line is any indi­ca­tion, it is true.

“I have one son, 15 years in the Air Force, and he’s a Mas­ter Sergeant (George III). My youngest is a U.S. Marine. He is a sergeant in Afghanistan,” Gard­ner said.

Even with a war going on, Gardner’s youngest, Tyler Gard­ner, still keeps in con­tact with his fam­ily here in Wellington.

“He calls once in a while (from Afghanistan). It’s not easy for him, but he does,” Gard­ner said.

When Gardner’s career with the Navy was over, he went into the pri­vate sec­tor and was hired at Dun­lap, a com­pany that since 1873, had been a leader in the field of gen­eral and mechan­i­cal contractors.

Gard­ner mar­ried Deb­o­rah Ann (Will­bond) in Jan­u­ary, 1983 in Welling­ton, and had plans of a more relax­ing life.

It was not long, how­ever, before the need to serve beck­oned, and once again, Gard­ner found him­self putting his life on the line for others.

Gard­ner began work­ing for the Welling­ton Com­mu­nity Fire Dis­trict, and even after 28 years of loyal ser­vice, can still look back at some funny moments.

“My fam­ily and I were com­ing back into town after a trip and there was a house fire. It was the dead of win­ter, Decem­ber of ‘84. The funny thing was, I had to leave my fam­ily in the car and go deal with the fire. I had to call the police to have them come get my fam­ily. Tyler was a two-month old,” Gard­ner said.

The fam­ily struc­ture can­not help but be affected by the life of a firefighter.

“Any­time my pager would go off, my boy would run to the win­dow and look for fire trucks,” Gard­ner said.

Two of Gardner’s sons fol­lowed him down the mil­i­tary path, while the third, Kenny Gard­ner, became involved with a fire depart­ment in the county due south of Lorain.

“Kenny is an EMS cap­tain for the Ash­land City Fire Depart­ment,” Gard­ner said.

He has seven chil­dren — Tim, Kenny, Kim, Misty, George, Tyler and Josh — and 16 grand­chil­dren whose lives keep him busy. His brother, Russ Gard­ner, is the retired fire chief of the Carlisle Fire Department.

His wife is an LPN, and both are trained EMTs, hav­ing served the South Lorain County Ambu­lance District.

Gard­ner has gone through the retire­ment pro­ce­dure before, as he was the trans­porta­tion direc­tor for both Mid­vew and Buck­eye school districts.

Cur­rently, Gard­ner con­tin­ues to be on the move as he dri­ves a truck for Miller Truck­ing and is con­sid­ered by his peers to be a seri­ous gearhead.

He has also been a Mason for more than 10 years, and camped at Clare-Mar Lakes with his fam­ily for 22 years.

The Fire Dis­trict plans a con­grat­u­la­tory event this Sun­day, June 10, 2-4 p.m. with a pre­sen­ta­tion fol­lowed by light refresh­ments. All are welcome.

Posted by Adam Fox on Jun 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.