On Saturday August 22, 2015 the members of Bay District held a reunion at station 3 for previous and current members from the years 1950’s, 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s, 1990’s and 2000’s. This was organized by our webmaster Jason Adams, former fire chief Mike Stanley and firefighter David Bradshaw. Jason and David live in North Carolina and worked out the details over the internet along with past chief Stanley.

At first I don’t think they realized just what kind of turnout they would have. This as far as I know was the first time something like this had been done. So Jason put it on our website along with notices on www.SoMdNews.net and word of mouth. Before you knew it we had almost 100 former members sign up on line. So now, seeing what kind of response he was having, it was time to go to step 2 and that was having a program that all who attended would enjoy themselves.

He decided on a picnic kind of get together along with demonstrations of firefighting at our new training facility after everyone had eaten. So the firefighters from station 3, under the direction of Training Officer Richard Sullivan, wanted to show the old timers how they do it today. All were impressed and the guy’s from the 1950’s could not believe just how far firefighting has come in the past 50 years.

But the biggest part of the day was just sitting around and talking about old times. Now some of us were having a hard time moving but on this day we were a bunch of firefighting fools and we had fought some big ones over the years. Many were amazed at how well the firehouse looked and the equipment we had.

There were rides on the apparatus and tours of the station and enough talk about how we used to do it to last until the next time which we hope will be in 5 years.

My hat’s off to several people who without their help this would not have happened. Fire Chief Joe Gould and President Wayne Johnson saw that everything ran smoothly and the firefighters from station 3 who worked many, many hours to make sure the place and equipment was spic and span.

And finally the Associates of our Department who without their help we just couldn’t have pulled this off, for fixing the food, setting up tables and chairs and just being there to get it done. We had each person fill out a form with some good information and we hope to make up a book to share with all. As you can expect there were plenty of pictures taken (over 700) but I won’t bore you all and put them on here but I do want to share some of them especially the group photos. Check them out and see if you recognize anybody. Any of you former members who want some of the pictures give me a call and I will try and hook you up.

Jason, Mike, and David. You done a good thing.

Let me say that I did some pictures and it was hard to decide which ones to use so you don't get bored but here goes. Also, I want to just say that there was 1,128 years of firefighting experience in the building on Saturday and boy the stories that were told. I tried to listen to them all.