McGuire, Don

              
ORAL HISTORY OF ROBERT (DON) MCGUIRE
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
September 4, 2013
 
MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel and today is September 4, 2013, and I am at the home of Don McGuire who... your address is Clinton, but this is out Black Oak Road, isn't it?
MR. MCGUIRE: That's correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's correct. Mr. McGuire, thank you for taking time to talk with us.
MR. MCGUIRE: You're more than welcome.
MR. MCDANIEL: We appreciate it. We're going to talk about your life in Oak Ridge. You were involved... you were a fireman in the Fire Department for Oak Ridge for a long time. We're going to get to that, but let's start at the beginning. Why don't you tell me... tell me where you were born and raised.
MR. MCGUIRE: I was born in Campbell County in a little coal mining community. My father was a coal miner when I was very young. So, Caryville, Tennessee, rural route, it was across the mountain.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, it's not too far from here, is it?
MR. MCGUIRE: No, it's about 20 miles.
MR. MCDANIEL: 20 miles. So you grew up there. Now, what did your father do?
MR. MCGUIRE: He was a coal miner.
MR. MCDANIEL: He was a coal miner, that's right, he was a coal miner. What about your mother?
MR. MCGUIRE: She was just a homemaker like most women were in that day.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did you have brothers or sisters?
MR. MCGUIRE: I have three younger sisters.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you grew up in Caryville, kind of out in the country.
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, actually, most of my growing up years were in Lake City.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MR. MCGUIRE: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok... So, what year were you born?
MR. MCGUIRE: 1934.
MR. MCDANIEL: 1934. What do you remember about that? What do you remember about growing up and your dad being a coal miner in this area?
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, when they talk about the good old days, my memories of those days were not actually the good old days. Coal miners really had a struggle. They didn't see daylight in the wintertime except on Sunday, the only day off that they could actually see the sun shining.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. MCGUIRE: They went to work before daylight and got off from work and came home after dark.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, where did your dad work, mostly? Was there a specific mine did he work all over the area?
MR. MCGUIRE: He worked all over the area. He worked in probably at least 8 or 10 different mines over a period of 10 years or so.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? Now, how long did he live?
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, he died in 1983.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MR. MCGUIRE: And he was 7-... 78 years old.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, you know, that's kind of ... that's pretty good for a coal miner, isn't it?
MR. MCGUIRE: It is, yes, it is.
MR. MCDANIEL: I mean, you know, a lot of coal miners don't live very long just because of the working conditions.
MR. MCGUIRE: That's correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, where'd you go to high school?
MR. MCGUIRE: In Lake City.
MR. MCDANIEL: In Lake City, so you went to high school in Lake City and you graduated there.
MR. MCGUIRE: I graduated from Lake City High School the last year the school existed. They built the new high school and we graduated in the new building which is now the middle school of Lake City. That was before the days of Anderson County High School.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. So you were the last, one of the last graduates of Lake City High School.
MR. MCGUIRE: Of the old high school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Of the old high school. That's correct, that's correct. And then, where the middle school is now, was the new Lake City High School.
MR. MCGUIRE: That's right.
MR. MCDANIEL: And then, it eventually became Anderson County High School. So, what year did you graduate?
MR. MCGUIRE: In 1952.
MR. MCDANIEL: 1952. What were you involved in sports or... in high school, what did...?
MR. MCGUIRE: I played football and basketball.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did you? What...? Did you know what you wanted to do when you graduated?
MR. MCGUIRE: Actually, no. (laughter)
MR. MCDANIEL: What did you do?
MR. MCGUIRE: I worked with my dad for a year and I migrated to Cincinnati, Ohio, and got a job in the industry in Cincinnati, which was pretty commonplace for people of that era.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok. And, 'in the industry,' what industry?
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, I held four different positions, I guess, or jobs in the couple of years, three years that I was in Ohio, but the longest one was salesperson for a cookie company -- a bakery -- and my territory was primarily in northern Kentucky, from the border of the Tennessee... I mean, Ohio, Kentucky border to near Lexington, Kentucky, and that area there.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you worked -- you were a cookie salesman! (laughter)
MR. MCGUIRE: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, you were young and, you know, you didn't have a family then, I guess.
MR. MCGUIRE: We had one daughter.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, did you? So you were married, you were married then?
MR. MCGUIRE: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok. So, how did you end up coming back to East Tennessee?
MR. MCGUIRE: My wife and I were on vacation shortly before we moved back. And we'd been homesick practically the whole time we were up there, you know, in the big city and being from the country, why, it just wasn't ideal.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: So, we had visited a little convenience store to purchase some items near my parents' home, and the gentleman who had previously owned the store had recently passed away and his wife was running the store and she was a native from North Carolina. She wanted to move back and she made us a proposition to sell us the store at what we thought was a good deal. So we talked it over and a in couple of weeks, we came back to Tennessee and purchased the grocery store and we operated it for about five years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? So it was just a little market?
MR. MCGUIRE: It was, yes. We sold gasoline. It was on US 25W, which was the Interstate 75 of that day.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: It was just a few years before they built the interstate.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: And all the traffic from Michigan and Ohio came through Lake City.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MR. MCGUIRE: So, we patronized... we secured the tourist trade. We had a couple of motels in the area and we sold gasoline and we sold chipped ice, packaged ice, which, for picnic coolers and such was kind of a unique thing in that day.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really? Ok.
MR. MCGUIRE: So we got a lot of business from tourists in the summer time so we did quite well.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, good. Now, how old were you and your wife at this point?
MR. MCGUIRE: We were in our early 20s.
MR. MCDANIEL: Early 20s. Wow. That's ambitious, wasn't it? (laughter)
MR. MCGUIRE: We didn't realize it at the time, but it certainly was.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. Exactly, exactly. So, what was the name of the market?
MR. MCGUIRE: Thriftway Grocery.
MR. MCDANIEL: Thriftway Grocery. Ok. And was it right in the middle of Lake City?
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, it was on the north end of Lake City, but it was in the city limits, yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is anything there today?
MR. MCGUIRE: Yes, there's a Mexican restaurant there and a motel.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really? Ok. So you stayed there for five years.
MR. MCGUIRE: Approximately five years.
MR. MCDANIEL: About five years, and then what happened?
MR. MCGUIRE: We sold the business. The market in Lake City... Of course, after the interstate came into existence, that took away a lot of the tourist traffic.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: And Y-12 and Oak Ridge had had a big lay off. The Air Force base that was located on the mountain near, at Briceville, near Lake City closed. They just shut it down completely and everyone moved away. So, economically, things weren't going too well and we got an opportunity to sell it and so we did that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. So what did you do then?
MR. MCGUIRE: I became employed at a little manufacturing plant there in Lake City, just as they moved in to Lake City. They came out of New York. It was a commercial fishnet factory.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh!
MR. MCGUIRE: And I was the shipping clerk for the term that I worked there. I guess it was another three years or so, three and a half years that I worked there. So I did all the shipping and was responsible for delivering, personally delivering, and the big nets that they manufactured. We delivered them ...
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. MCGUIRE: ...in our own vehicles so I traveled quite a bit over the eastern sea coast.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. I imagine that's where you had to go, isn't it? (laughs) To the coast.
MR. MCGUIRE: It was, yeah. From Amagansett, Long Island, in New York, all -- couple places in North Carolina, a coastal area down near Jacksonville, Florida, called Fernandina Beach.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, sure, Fernandina Beach.
MR. MCGUIRE: And, I guess, the biggest customers we had were in Louisiana, south of New Orleans...
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MR. MCGUIRE: And then a couple in Texas.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you had to deliver those?
MR. MCGUIRE: I did. 
MR. MCDANIEL: So you were on the road all the time, weren't you?
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, actually, I'd deliver the nets on the weekends, maybe leave on a Thursday evening and get back, probably Sunday evening. Just directly there and directly back. And then I did ... We made a lot of sports nets, too, landing nets, that type of thing, and I did the shipping of those.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see. So you worked hard for those three years, didn't you?
MR. MCGUIRE: A lot of hours, yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: A lot of hours. But that was good that you were home during the week with your family, I guess, too.
MR. MCGUIRE: Oh, it definitely was, yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you stayed with them three years. Sounds to me like you were doing a lots of different things but kind of hadn't landed yet where you felt like you were -- that was it.
MR. MCGUIRE: You're exactly right, that's correct. (laughter)
MR. MCDANIEL: That's a young man's life, you know!
MR. MCGUIRE: It is.
MR. MCDANIEL: For the first 10 or 15 years, I would imagine.
MR. MCGUIRE: That's right.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, what did you do after that?
MR. MCGUIRE: I became employed by the City of Oak Ridge in the Fire Department.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, tell me about that. Tell me... And you stayed with the Fire Department until you retired?
MR. MCGUIRE: I did.
MR. MCDANIEL: So that was... So that was where you kind of ended up.
MR. MCGUIRE: It is, yes. That was my career.
MR. MCDANIEL: That was your career.
MR. MCGUIRE: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Tell me about ... Now, what year was it when you went to work for the Fire Department?
MR. MCGUIRE: In 1964.
MR. MCDANIEL: 1964. Tell me a little bit about the Fire Department then. What was it like?
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, it was kind of unique as Fire Departments go, just as the City of Oak Ridge was unique. I had the opportunity to come into the Fire Department at just about the time that most of the employees that were still there were preparing for their retirement.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MR. MCGUIRE: And these were the people who had grown up in the Fire Department back from the earliest days. They were employed in 1942 and '43.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: And so, coming in as a part of the newer generation, so to speak, I heard all the stories. (laughter) And I find it quite interesting. I had been a member of the local Volunteer Fire Department in Lake City and one of the supervisors from Oak Ridge Fire Department did our training. He was our training supervisor in Lake City just as a kind of a part time job. So, I had learned some of the history and -- it was a real opportunity for me to come in at that particular time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Why the Fire Department? Was that just something you were drawn to?
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, I had become acquainted with this person I was speaking of, Ed Dale was his name.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MR. MCGUIRE: He became a good friend at that time. And we... I had an opportunity to learn a lot from him and just becoming a friend of him. He asked me one day if I'd be interested in coming down, filling out an application and, of course, I said, 'Yes,' because at this... The little factory I worked at in Lake City was bought out by a major conglomerate.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: And they were planning on moving the facility to Blue Mountain, Alabama, where their headquarters were, so, you know, I was either going to have to move away...
MR. MCDANIEL: Or get another job...
MR. MCGUIRE: Or get another job in the area.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: So it just all fell together.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: I came down and took the entrance examination and passed it and so...
MR. MCDANIEL: You were, what? Not quite 30, I guess, were you?
MR. MCGUIRE: I was 29 years old.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's what I was thinking. You were 29.
MR. MCGUIRE: And that's the cut-off, that would have been... at 30 ... After age 30 they wouldn't consider...
MR. MCDANIEL: You were too old.
MR. MCGUIRE: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Because it's a pretty demanding job. I mean being a fireman's pretty demanding physically, isn't it?
MR. MCGUIRE: It definitely is. Not every day, but when it's needed, you have to have it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly. So, you got the job. And so, what were you? You were a...? What was your title?
MR. MCGUIRE: Firefighter.
MR. MCDANIEL: Firefighter.
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, actually, it's Firefighter Apprentice until you complete your one year's probationary period. 
MR. MCDANIEL: "Proby" -- you're a "proby"...
MR. MCGUIRE: That's right. And you have to go through all the examinations and it's involved for a year. You really... It's a... People don't realize how many varied subjects that you have to be well-acquainted with to be a fireman such as building construction and building materials, things that can create some poisonous gases when they burn that are inside the house such as insulation and carpeting and sofas and that kind of thing. There's just a... We had 12 different subjects that we had to pass an examination on, one each month until the final, final test.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. And then, probably, at the same time, you were doing the physical aspects of it at the same time, weren't you? 
MR. MCGUIRE: Right. I was one of the generations, the last people who rode the tailboard of the fire engine where you hung onto the bar and rode the tailboard.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MR. MCGUIRE: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: They quit that, huh?
MR. MCGUIRE: They were forced to by the federal government. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? (laughter)
MR. MCGUIRE: A lot of changes have been made since those days.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, sure, sure... Now, so, that first year, you went through your probationary period, you took all your training and all your classes. Now, were those taught in Oak Ridge? Or did you have to go someplace to take those classes?
MR. MCGUIRE: At that time, most of them were taught in Oak Ridge. Now, we did go down to Murfreesboro, down to the Fire Academy, State Fire Academy, and took specialized classes, but that was usually just weekends, sometimes for a week-long thing, you know. But, no, most of it was down there in, within the Fire Department.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, where was the Fire Department at that time? Where was it located? Where it is now?
MR. MCGUIRE: Headquarters is where it is now, except it was on the opposite end of the building. It was where the Police Department headquarters is now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see, I see. But the ... where was the main fire station?
MR. MCGUIRE: Actually, it would ... I guess you could say it was on Illinois Avenue. The old brick building where the training tower was? Where Ruby Tuesday's restaurant is now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. MCGUIRE: It's that location.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's where it was, huh?
MR. MCGUIRE: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, was that the only station in town?
MR. MCGUIRE: No, at that time we had four.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok. Where were they?
MR. MCGUIRE: One of them was located in the Jefferson Shopping Center and one of them was located in the East Village on Anna Road.
MR. MCDANIEL: Was it...? Was the one in Jefferson where... next to the drug store there?
MR. MCGUIRE: It was.
MR. MCDANIEL: Because there's a big opening, I mean, looks like...
MR. MCGUIRE: It was actually on the end of the building. It was part of one of the early shopping centers that the federal government built in Oak Ridge. The neighborhood shopping centers?
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MR. MCGUIRE: And on every one of those, back in the early days, they had a fire station with a firewall between them to protect the fire station and actually they had a fire in the Jefferson Shopping Center a number of years ago and the only part of the building that wasn't destroyed was the old fire station.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. MCGUIRE: Which, at that time we had moved farther south down to Louisiana Avenue on the [Oak Ridge] Turnpike.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right... So, there was the main one on Illinois, there was Jefferson...?
MR. MCGUIRE: East Village on Anna Road.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MR. MCGUIRE: And Jackson Square.
MR. MCDANIEL: Was there one at Jackson Square?
MR. MCGUIRE: There was, at the corner of Kentucky and Tennessee Avenues
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok. 
MR. MCGUIRE: Right across the street from where the original library was located.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, exactly. How many employees ... How many employees did the Fire Department have then, approximately?
MR. MCGUIRE: I can tell you exactly. Management and all was 42 employees, that was the Chief, two Deputy Chiefs, a Training Officer, an Inspector, whose duties were building inspection and those things, law enforcement, and the rest of them were officers and men on the crew, fire companies.

MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right... So you stayed there 'til, you said, '96? '94? 
MR. MCGUIRE: '94.
MR. MCDANIEL: '94. Ok. And the year you went there was?
MR. MCGUIRE: '64.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you were there 30 years.
MR. MCGUIRE: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Talk about your 30 years with the Fire Department. Tell me... I want to hear about some of the big fires, maybe, some of the big stories, some of the big things that happened to you and also kind of how, you know, the Fire Department it changed and evolved, kind of with the city, I guess. You know, that's a unique perspective, being in the middle of something. You can kind of see it, especially now that you're out you can kind of look back. So, talk about that a little.
MR. MCGUIRE: Ok. In the beginning, I was stationed with Capt. Ralph McMahan, who later became Chief of the Department just shortly before he retired. And he was my company officer, so I had the opportunity to work, in the beginning, with one of the most capable officers in the Department, which was a good thing for me. I started on the Illinois Avenue station where the training tower was. At that time, we worked a 24 hour shift every other day which was you left at 8 o'clock one morning and you came back at 8 o'clock the next morning and you was there for a 24 hour period of time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Was that common? I mean, you know, through Fire Departments?
MR. MCGUIRE: At that time, it was, unless you consider the cities like New York and the big departments up North, you know. They couldn't have physically, under the conditions they worked under, you know, with... they couldn't have physically stood that type of shift, so they had better hours than we did. It seemed like, though, you was always going to work or coming back home from work. I mean, you know there was very little time in between and, actually, for a year before I moved into Oak Ridge, I retained the job that I had with the little factory in Lake City. I still worked as shipping clerk for a brief period of time. And then, when we moved to Oak Ridge, well, then I resigned my job up there. It, the company did move their headquarters to Blue Mountain, Alabama.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you didn't get a whole lot of sleep that time when you were working both those ...
MR. MCGUIRE: No. By this time we had four daughters, so. (laughter)
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. You needed the job. Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: Had to get in there and dig. And neither of the jobs, you know, were really lucrative jobs. Not that great a salary, but that's beside the point, that's a personal thing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: I had the unique opportunity to be one of the first younger generations to come into the Department. They had a big lay off after the Second World War ended and the town...
MR. MCDANIEL: It shrunk!
MR. MCGUIRE: It shrunk. It shrunk from a population of 75,000 inhabitants of the city and thousands of others coming in every day by bus to work, down to shortly... Well, when I came into the department, there were approximately 27,000 people live in the city so that was from 75,000. And the Fire Department had had a big lay off about that time. They had 11 stations throughout the city and, of course, as the city shrunk, all the trailer parks and the residences down near K-25, temporary residences, they just completely moved them out, you know, the flat-tops were hauled out of town into other locations and the trailers were all...
MR. MCDANIEL: Were gone.
MR. MCGUIRE: Were gone. So, then, finally, they came down to the point to where these men, older men started to retiring.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: And so they had to be replaced and I was one of the... I guess I was about sixth or seventh employee that was hired after the big lay off.
MR. MCDANIEL: After the big lay off, right.
MR. MCGUIRE: And so this was an opportunity... an opportunity to me to converse with these gentlemen before they did leave the department and to get these old stories -- and tales and firemen have more stories and tales than you could ever believe.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: And some of the characters that came into the department. You know, at that time, they were hiring, in the early days, they were hiring older people because all the young men were off in France and, you know, and Germany and places fighting the war. So these men were not professional firemen when they came in to the department.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: They were farmers and coal miners and timber people, you know, and just the local industries that had existed in the years before Oak Ridge. One interesting story, there was a gentleman who came into the department whose father worked for the railroad and they advertised for firemen and he saw the advertisement and he came in to get the job – now, this was back in the early ‘40s -- and he, the story goes, and it might have been exaggerated a little bit, but he worked for a couple of weeks before he found out that he wasn't employed by the railroad. (laughter)
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. MCGUIRE: He was going to be a fireman on the rail road!
MR. MCDANIEL: Going to be a fireman on the railroad.
MR. MCGUIRE: But that might have been exaggerated a little bit, but I'm sure it was true.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: And so, I had the opportunity to learn from these people and, my goodness, it was an interesting ... an interesting time period.
MR. MCDANIEL: And those guys, like you said, they were the ones who made up the first Fire Department.
MR. MCGUIRE: They were, yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Of Oak Ridge.
MR. MCGUIRE: Now, there was a few people came from the Knoxville Fire Department. They were retired, primarily, and they hired them as officers, to fill the positions of officers in the department.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. MCGUIRE: Now, Troy Richardson was ...
MR. MCDANIEL: Management type folks.
MR. MCGUIRE: Exactly, well, actually the captains more than anything, who were the supervisors on the companies, the firefighting companies.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. You know, if you have a bunch of people who don't know how to fight fires, you need somebody there to tell them how to do it, don't you?
MR. MCGUIRE: You do.
MR. MCDANIEL: That has some experience.
MR. MCGUIRE: And if you read some of the stories in the book I wrote about the History of the Fire Department, why, you'll pick up on a lot of that.
MR. MCDANIEL: And, since you mention that, you did write -- and we'll talk about that in a minute --  but you did write a history of the Oak Ridge Fire Department, didn't you?
MR. MCGUIRE: Shortly after I retired.
MR. MCDANIEL: After you retired. And does it contain a lot of those stories or the, you know, about those old guys and things such as that?
MR. MCGUIRE: I have one chapter dedicated to that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. MCGUIRE: To personalities, yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok. All right. Well, good. So you have a... Not only did you have 30 years in the Department, but you were able to gather a lot of the history and put it together in a place.
MR. MCGUIRE: And after I retired, I... of course you have a little more time to think about your past life and everything, and I thought, "These guys are gone." And I had the opportunity to hear all their stories and the histories and everything, and it needed to be passed along, it needed to be retained, you know, for history, so...
MR. MCDANIEL: Absolutely.
MR. MCGUIRE: I'd often said someone should write a book, when hearing about those stories, said, "Man, someone should write a book about these things!" and so I did. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: And so you did. (laughs) Well, good! So, in the early days of Oak Ridge, like you said... I mean, not of Oak Ridge, but of the... when you first went to the Fire Department let's say in the ‘60s, you were fairly young, well you were, you know, in your early 30s at that point. Tell me, talk to me about your career a little bit in the Fire Department.
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, you asked earlier about some of the larger fires.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, I wanted you to talk about those, too.
MR. MCGUIRE: I had been in the department from April until, I believe it was August -- August or September -- when we had the largest fire in the city that had ever occurred.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. MCGUIRE: And that was the old Central Cafeteria building.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. MCGUIRE: Right. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok, which was down Jackson Square area, wasn't it?
MR. MCGUIRE: It was. It was on the Square, actually. It was one of the earlier government buildings, constructed buildings, that, at this time was kind of a little shopping center. They had a barber shop, beauty shops and it was where it... The original Oak Ridger building was immediately behind it and it sat on Central Avenue, it fronted on Central Avenue. They had the bus, the Greyhound bus terminal there, just a lot of things. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: Down underneath the building, on the lower level, there was a printing company that had recently moved out and they had left all of their excess materials, old publications and printed material and stuff, and they'd piled it into a pile...
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: ... down on the floor, the concrete floor and, I guess it was probably about between 3 and 4 o'clock in the afternoon we got the report that there was a fire in the building.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, it being probably one of the biggest commercial buildings of that time in the city, all the companies responded.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: And they began to call in people that were off duty to man the fire engines to protect the rest of the city, the reserve engines.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: When we responded, they put a breathing apparatus on me, and, of course, I was still a recruit, you know, just four or five months on the job.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, so you're still in your probationary period...
MR. MCGUIRE: ...and they tied a rope around me and sent me into the building to find out what was going on. Of course, the other companies had responded, one up on Central Avenue and at different locations in the building and they were inspecting that part of the building. Well, I went into the building and I came back and reported what I had seen, which was this pile of paper was smoldering and smoking but it wasn't, there was no flame.
MR. MCDANIEL: No flame, right.
MR. MCGUIRE: So, we laid a line and wet it down and came back out and the smoke was barely detectable in the upper level of the building so the Deputy Chief gave the order to take the lines down and he was planning on leaving one company there for a period of time and the other companies were to go back. Well, we were taking our lines down, our supply line from the hydrant to the bumper and our discharge lines that... our line that we carried into the building to wet the debris down and we were loading it back onto the engine getting it ready to go back to the station and, all at once, now, (laughs) and this is really an oddity, all at once the entire upper area in the attic primarily just, the smoke just came, I mean, it was unbelievable. It was like an explosion.
MR. MCDANIEL: Was there flame?
MR. MCGUIRE: Not at this time. No. After the investigation, later on, why, they came up with some reasoning how that occurred.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: Of course, our chief had come from headquarters, Troy Richardson, who was the chief at that time, had come up and he was standing in front of the building, in the Square area and there was a terrific wind blowing out of the west that afternoon and when this occurred, all this smoke was right down into the Square.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, yeah.
MR. MCGUIRE: He was standing in front of the building, out in the street, and he had on his helmet and his coat, his turn out coat, and he went down and lost his helmet and a photographer from the Oak Ridger got a picture of him lying on the street with his helmet a couple of feet from him which was a pretty remarkable photograph.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow!
MR. MCGUIRE: And so they took him down to the hospital which was nearby.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: And checked him out. Of course, he was overcome by smoke, you know, was the report. And the whole attic area was involved in flame, I mean, it was, you know, burning away rapidly and because of this terrific wind ...
MR. MCDANIEL: It was just feeding it, wasn't it?
MR. MCGUIRE: Oh, man alive! It was just all over the attic. It was a common attic with no dividers in it and so it just practically exploded.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet you that building, I don't care how long the cafeteria hadn't been there, I bet it was... I bet it was just covered with grease. I mean, you know, the kind of grease that gets in and you can't ever get out, you know type thing?
MR. MCGUIRE: True, true. The kitchen was in the basement and it had a dumbwaiter, an opening that carried the food up to the dining area in the early days when it was a cafeteria run by the government, and the fire had re-ignited, actually, the gases from the fire, had traveled through this dumbwaiter all the way into the attic.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. MCGUIRE: So the fire went from the basement into the attic and that's where the conflagration was primarily.
MR. MCDANIEL: That was just a grease tunnel, from the basement to the attic.
MR. MCGUIRE: It was and it was open, you know, where the heat could travel and it had gathered up into the attic and the final report was, after the investigation, that, of course, they had the electrical service disconnected and when they gave the order for us to break down and go back to the stations, they turned the power, the electrical power back on, and when they did, it sparked and with all this wind coming in through the openings into the attic and all those gases, hot gases that were present, it was just like an explosion.
MR. MCDANIEL: It just boomed, like an explosion.
MR. MCGUIRE: And this dark smoke just covered the whole Square and they were concerned, you know, that they might even lose other buildings but, fortunately...
MR. MCDANIEL: Did that...? Now was that building a total loss.
MR. MCGUIRE: Oh, yes, yes. They had to tear it, well what was left of it, they tore it down and moved it out shortly thereafter. And there was a big hole in that area for a long time before they filled it in and built some other places.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now where would that be, exactly, today? What's sitting there now? Anything?
MR. MCGUIRE: I believe there's an exterminating service. They have built some smaller buildings, new buildings in that particular area.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, yeah, those buildings between Tennessee and the Turnpike, is that right?
MR. MCGUIRE: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok, that area. 
MR. MCGUIRE: On the left, going west, coming off the Turnpike.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, yeah. I know where that is.
MR. MCGUIRE: But it was a wood frame building with heavy timber, everything in it was wooden construction.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, of course.
MR. MCGUIRE: An old building and it really hadn't been taken care of, you know, so it was quite a spectacular fire.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet it was! (laughter)
MR. MCGUIRE: And then another interesting story, if you want me to tell you about fires...
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: One Sunday afternoon, I was located at the Jackson Fire Station, the Jackson Square Station, fronted on Tennessee Avenue, remember there was a bank and some other buildings behind it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MR. MCGUIRE: Near the Playhouse, the Playhouse was almost a part of that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, exactly.
MR. MCGUIRE: We were sitting watching television, something very interesting on in the afternoon, and it was a very hot day, very hot. They were getting ready to land on the moon for the first time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. MCGUIRE: And we were watching the television ...
MR. MCDANIEL: And so what day would that have been?
MR. MCGUIRE: I don't remember the exact date, but it was a summer afternoon on Sunday. Sunday afternoon.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MR. MCGUIRE: We got the tone. They toned us out and gave us a vocal message that there was smoke in the old building on Fairbanks Road that was, they called it the cold storage plant. In the earlier days, people could rent cooling areas and they kept meat and things, you know.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok. All right.
MR. MCGUIRE: They said that there was smoke visible. Of course, there was few out traveling that afternoon. Everyone was glued to their televisions, you know.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, everybody was watching TV.
MR. MCGUIRE: So I walked out of the recreational area room of the building out in to where the fire engines was located in the engine room and looked out the window and I saw this huge cloud of just dense black smoke over in that area on Fairbanks Road.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: So, we knew right away that we were going to have a busy afternoon. We probably wouldn't see the landing on the moon and that was true. We didn't see it because we were there until early in the morning, the next morning, and this was probably two in the afternoon.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: And we responded over there and we were the first company in and the closest and we hooked what we call an indirect hook-up or reverse lay. I was the company officer at the time, the captain of the company, and I instructed my driver to lay the reverse lay which means that you lay your discharge lines, you take them off the engine and lay them on the ground and the engine goes back and hooks up with a big line to the hydrant so you have a greater supply of water.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see. Yeah, sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: And I had kneeled on the hose. I took some of the hose off the tailboard of the engine and laid it on the ground and sat on it with my knees, kneeled on it with my knees so my weight would keep it from ...
MR. MCDANIEL: Just dragging, right.
MR. MCGUIRE: Dragging with the engine back to the hydrant.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: And just after I kneeled down, I heard this big boom! and they had a 440 service to that because of all the refrigeration, you know, it carried a lot of... used a lot of electricity so there was a big demand.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: And before I could even glance up, this power line, this entrance cable, of course, had not been disconnected because we were the first company in, even the electrical company hadn't responded yet.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MR. MCGUIRE: And it fell right at the rear of me. Of course, the tension on the line had pulled it away from the building and here I was kneeled down there and that thing probably didn't miss my shoulder over a couple, three feet. And it hit that asphalt and it was blowing chunks of asphalt and it sounded like a big bull or an elephant bellowing, you know roaring, and it would knock chunks of asphalt that probably weighed 50 or a hundred pounds out of the pavement.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow! And you were right there near it, weren't you?
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, it just wasn't my time to go is all you can say. (laughter) If I'd been standing it would have probably hit me on the shoulder.
MR. MCDANIEL: It would have got you! Wow!
MR. MCGUIRE: It kind of scared my willie a little bit.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet! I bet! My goodness!
MR. MCGUIRE: And we spent the afternoon there, but fortunately, at this time, Chief Jack Lee, who had been hired as chief from Florida, was our chief and he was called out and when he arrived, we had been there for probably an hour and a half, two hours, and he saw the condition, the physical condition that the men were in and they called all these off duty people in to the scene of the fire and sent us back to the station for a little while and we'd had a couple of men because of heat exposure and heat exhaustion had had to go down to the hospital to get some relief. One fellow got his hands burned by laying them onto a ladder that was near the building.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow.
MR. MCGUIRE: So, it was quite a fire, too.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure, I'm sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: So we spent the remainder of the night, after we got it under control and got the equipment back to the station, we spent the remainder of the night cleaning the equipment and putting clean, dry hose back on the engines.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. MCGUIRE: Quite an experience.
MR. MCDANIEL: In those days, how many calls would you get in a year, average, company-wise. I know there's a difference between fire calls and medical calls and things such as that.
MR. MCGUIRE: We probably received an average of less than five calls per day at that time, in the earlier days.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. MCGUIRE: And a lot of those were... The government had a real good system for the city. They had, when they planned the city and they knew that they wanted to protect the city, you know, so they had a good system of sprinklers in all of the big buildings, the commercial buildings, and they were hooked up to a communications system that automatically sent an alarm in when one of the, when the sprinkler system activated.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok! That was kind of advanced, that's kind of before its day, wasn't it?
MR. MCGUIRE: For this area of the country.
MR. MCDANIEL: For this area of the country.
MR. MCGUIRE: It definitely was. And, that had its problems, too, because if we had a rain storm and electricity was interrupted that sent an alarm in from every building.
MR. MCDANIEL: Everywhere, of course, of course... (laughter)
MR. MCGUIRE: And you had to go check them out, you know, regardless. But we actually had more serious fires in those days than they do now because of the building construction laws and things have changed so radically.
MR. MCDANIEL: And everything back then was wood. I mean, you know, when the Army came in, I mean, that's what they built everything with.
MR. MCGUIRE: That's true.
MR. MCDANIEL: I mean, you know, all those original buildings from World War II were, they were wood wrapped around a brick chimney, that's about all the way it was.
MR. MCGUIRE: Even the DOE had... well, it wasn't the DOE, it was Atomic Energy Commission at that time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: You know, they call it the Castle on the Hill across from Jackson Square? Across the Turnpike? It was a wood frame structure.
MR. MCDANIEL: It was, it was a big wood frame structure.
MR. MCGUIRE: Wood siding. Yeah, you kind of think of it as the Pentagon of Oak Ridge. (laughter)
MR. MCDANIEL: That's exactly right. Pentagon of the Hills was probably what it was.
MR. MCGUIRE: Yeah, we had more serious fires but at that time, the town was a lot smaller than it is now. It was pretty much confined to the old city.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, exactly.
MR. MCGUIRE: We had a lot of the old dormitories of the early days that burned. And they were -- It was like you said, they were kind of the type of building that had two wings and between the wings, there was, that's where the laundry and the heating systems, the furnaces and everything was located.
MR. MCDANIEL: If you look at them from above, they'd be an H.
MR. MCGUIRE: Right, exactly.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. MCGUIRE: They had common attics, there wasn't any dividers in the attics and there wasn't any kind of sprinkler system or anything so if a fire occurred in those buildings, if it ever got in the attic it's Katy bar the door because it'd just travel from one end to the other, you know, just immediately.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: So we lost a few of those. During my career in the Fire Department, though, I only remember one life that we lost ...
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really? Ok.
MR. MCGUIRE: ... and that was in one of those type buildings.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MR. MCGUIRE: It was up in the Jackson Square area and actually, they had evacuated the building and one of the tenants had a pet or something of value inside the building and she went back in...
MR. MCDANIEL: She went back in.
MR. MCGUIRE: ...undetected and she was overcome by smoke and she died in the building.
MR. MCDANIEL: In your career, in your 30 years in the Fire Department, did you have any firefighters who got killed fighting a fire in Oak Ridge?
MR. MCGUIRE: No. Actually, shortly before I came to the department, they had lost two people, some of the older men in the Fire Department, but both of them died of heart attacks at the scene of the fire.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok. Right, right...
MR. MCGUIRE: But no one... In fact, we had, I don't recall anyone ever being seriously burned in a fire. One of the big issues at that time, though, was breathing apparatus. This self-contained breathing apparatus was just being introduced to the fire service. Of course, they'd used it for under seas, underwater diving. We had two types of breathing equipment at that time. Both of them were totally inadequate but it was the best that you could get.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: One of them was called the Chem-Ox and it actually chemically changed the carbon dioxide that you exhale back into oxygen, it converted it back into oxygen.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok, so it was just a... a kind of a continuous loop.
MR. MCGUIRE: A catalyst type of thing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right...
MR. MCGUIRE: It was heavy and cumbersome. It had ... the apparatus that did the chemical change in it, if it was punctured and it was wet by water, then there was an explosion, so there was a real hazard to it and it was a metal container and you had to be very careful about that.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: And the men in those days, you know, if you couldn't eat the smoke, you didn't stay in the Fire Department.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. MCGUIRE: You had to be a big macho tough guy, you know.
MR. MCDANIEL: Of course.
MR. MCGUIRE: And so, they were reluctant to wear the equipment. And then we had another little filter type thing that was just a little metal container with some charcoal and some other filters in it that would filter some of the gases and particles out of, you know, the air that you breathed. The problem with it was, though, about five minutes in a real smoky situation and it clogged up. (laughs) So you couldn't stay inside the building but just a short period of time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MR. MCGUIRE: And we had a lot of people retiring from the fire service -- and some of them didn't live to retire -- with breathing problems, you know, respiratory problems.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Now, at that point, now, you were with the Oak Ridge Fire Department.
MR. MCGUIRE: The city.
MR. MCDANIEL: The city, that's what I mean, the city. But the plants had their own Fire Department, is that correct?
MR. MCGUIRE: They did.
MR. MCDANIEL: So they dealt... So you all weren't exposed to un... as much to unusual hazards or things such as that, than perhaps they would have been.
MR. MCGUIRE: That's true, but we had a working agreement with them that if, a mutual aid agreement, that if they had something they couldn't control themselves with their limited manpower, we responded whenever asked.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok, I see.
MR. MCGUIRE: Of course, when we went into the restricted area we always had to be accompanied by a member of their department, you know.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, of course.
MR. MCGUIRE: But the difference in the City's Fire Department and the plant's Fire Department, theirs was essentially a fire prevention.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. MCGUIRE: They couldn't afford to ... I mean, you know, they didn't have fires. They had small fires but everything... The worst fire they had on the restricted areas was open fires out...
MR. MCDANIEL: Out in the fields...
MR. MCGUIRE: Out in the open, yeah. Open area. Some of those -- one particular area, they had the old dump site out near Y-12, you know, and they had a substance that they, a waste substance that they had in metal canisters, you know containers, 50-gallon containers.
MR. MCDANIEL: Drums.
MR. MCGUIRE: Drums. And they would haul them out and put them in the old quarry out there which was deep. And they'd get behind... get behind a barrier that they'd built, guard personnel would, and they would shoot those... shoot holes in those with rifles. Well, once the water entered 'em there was an explosion, you know. Quite often, when all the leaves and everything had fallen and everything was dry, some of the embers from the explosion would get over into that area and it would set open fires and, of course, they called us out right away, you know, so we got involved in that. And we responded out in those areas where the highways, the roadways intersected, Bear Creek Road, Bethel Valley Road and some of those.
MR. MCDANIEL: I would imagine, like, you eluded to this while ago, is they were fire prevention and they probably did a pretty good job because they couldn't afford to have a fire.
MR. MCGUIRE: That's exactly right.
MR. MCDANIEL: I mean, it was... it would have been catastrophic had there been a real fire in some of those facilities, wouldn't it?
MR. MCGUIRE: Exactly. Yes. And I'll tell you a brief story that would relate to that. They had the U.S. nuclear place that was... had the... they burned a lot of these materials that was shipped in to Oak Ridge and some from Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, exactly.
MR. MCGUIRE: In a big oven-like thing.
MR. MCDANIEL: What did they call it? They called it the incinerator.
MR. MCGUIRE: The Incinerator, that's right. Down near the river on Bear Creek Road.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, it wasn't part of the plant area and, of course, it was the city's responsibility to go out there and we had a couple of fires out there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did you?
MR. MCGUIRE: Right. You had to reclaim the water. Now, you couldn't allow the water that you used to extinguish the fires, you couldn't allow it to flow away.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow.
MR. MCGUIRE: And they had a little canal-like thing built as part of the original building but you really had to use your water wisely so that you didn't overflow those. You know, there's ...
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Because there were things in that fire that you don't want to get back into the water supply, you know, or the river.
MR. MCGUIRE: They were packing some of that stuff in these metal drums to be shipped out west to some of the ... the repository out west, that west repository out there and they had to use distilled water. There couldn't be any impurities in it at all. Well, for whatever reason, they used tap water one Sunday afternoon.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really.
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, I don't know how long that'd been going on, but anyway... Not very long because once it started reacting, these drums started exploding because it was expanding the materials inside.
MR. MCDANIEL: I see, I see.
MR. MCGUIRE: I think it was concrete powder that they were using, you know, as filler and once that started reacting, concrete, you know, does expand some.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: And they didn't know what was going on. It was, you know, it was a mystery to them. And when we responded out there, this was a situation we weren't familiar with and we didn't know how to react to. We finally discovered, after a real careful examination, what was going on. So we isolated the barrels in water to cool 'em so the expansion wouldn't take place so rapidly, you know, and that saved the situation. Some hairy things can happen sometimes you just wouldn't ever expect, you know.
MR. MCDANIEL: But, you know, kids are taught, people are taught their whole life if you're in an emergency and you need help, who do you call? The Fire Department.
MR. MCGUIRE: Any type of emergency.
MR. MCDANIEL: Any type of emergency. That's what I mean, if you need help, call the Fire Department because they'll come and help you. And that's basically what you had to do. I'm sure there were lots of situations where you came in and said, "Well, we're not experts in this, but we've got to figure this out."
MR. MCGUIRE: We had an interesting call down at the Kroger's store, when it was located downtown, near the Turnpike, one afternoon. It was a rescue call came in and when we got down there we found a little child, a little six-year-old boy, had run his arm up into a gumball machine trying to retrieve a gumball. And it had gotten it in there and it was hung and he couldn't get it out. And things like that, you know, just unexpected things.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: We got a call, one of the calls that was one of the most disturbing calls that we ever had. I was at the Jackson Avenue, or Jackson Square station and we get a call to a construction area over in the Emory Valley area. And the call came in that some kids were playing on a piece of heavy equipment and one of them had dropped the blade of this big earth mover onto a child. Oh, man, that was ... you know, your stomach just completely goes empty, you know. But when we got over there, we found that it wasn't the scenario that we were actually expecting. He had... he had gotten hung into the equipment and actually it didn't fall on him.
MR. MCDANIEL: He just got hung up in it.
MR. MCGUIRE: Just got hung up in it. But one of the men that was in the company I was on, he just went berserk, I mean, when the call came in. I didn't know whether he was going to be able to respond or not. He had two young children, you know, and it just hit him all at once.
MR. MCDANIEL: You know, I would imagine that would be a very difficult... that's a very difficult part of the job is dealing with death or, you know, responding to, you know, car accidents, you know, and to see that kind of stuff.
MR. MCGUIRE: Oh, yeah, you couldn't realize unless you've experienced it. If it hits you at the right time, you know, it can be devastating.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. And I would imagine over a career of that you either, I guess everybody learns to deal with it in a different way.
MR. MCGUIRE: Oh, that's true, yes. But it's just like being a professional nurse or, you know, a military man or something. You have to just convince yourself that, you know, I'm going to do the best I can and if the situation's something I can't control, I have to learn to deal with it and not allow it to deal with me.
MR. MCDANIEL: Let's talk just a little bit about changes in the Fire Department over the course of your 30 years and as it's related to Oak Ridge.
MR. MCGUIRE: Ok, early on, we had, like I said earlier, 11 companies. And they were... some of them were located remote and some of them... All the equipment that we had was used equipment when it came into the area. We had... Well, when I came into the department, we had the four companies, well three of the pieces of equipment were Howe fire pumpers.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MR. MCGUIRE: They came from down in South Carolina at the facility down there and we used those for a number of years and, man, I mean, it kept the mechanics busy trying to keep them on the road, you know.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: The management of the department at that time were real budget-minded. They wanted to impress, I guess, the City Council with how well they could, you know, save the city money. Well, actually, and that's quite a story -- that's a political story of its own (laughter) because we had replacement money coming in to the Fire Department budget and a piece of equipment was supposed to have lasted a number of ... a certain number of years and then the money was to have been provided within the budget to replace it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, it wasn't being used for that purpose. (laughs) But anyway, we...
MR. MCDANIEL: So there's a little bit of corruption in just about everything, isn't there?
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, I don't know that it was corruption, but it was just the way they managed things.
MR. MCDANIEL: Bad management of things.
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, they thought that the money was better spent paving streets, maybe, or expanding the electrical system or whatever. And the electric department, they always had brand new equipment and here, we're an emergency service, responding in these second-handed...
MR. MCDANIEL: Horse and buggies! (laughs)
MR. MCGUIRE: ... 20 year old pieces of equipment, you know. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly, exactly...
MR. MCGUIRE: But that has changed. They remedied that. They started using our replacement money. Got a chief that was, he wasn't so budget-minded later on. And this was about the time I, just before I left the department and they started buying some real good equipment. Like I stated with the breathing apparatus, now we have this breathing apparatus that is self-contained and you carry it in with you, you have a tank, a pressurized tank on your back that has good breathing air in it. It's not oxygen, as a lot of people might think, but it is compressed air that's supposed to last you approximately 30 minutes but when you're sucking air out of that thing in a hot atmosphere and your adrenaline was flowing, if you get 15-20 minutes out of it you're doing real well. But you can come out...
MR. MCDANIEL: But that's a long time to be in a building that's on fire. You need that anyway, isn't it?
MR. MCGUIRE: You do, actually, yes, and hopefully it'll be improved... that'll be improved on sometime. But it does allow you to exist in that kind of atmosphere where you can actually go into the building and search it out and make sure if there's people in there that you can rescue them, you know. It allows you to do that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: So, the equipment has changed. Building construction has changed dramatically. The federal government, federal regulations require, especially in commercial buildings and buildings that are occupied as assembly buildings and that type of thing, they, the laws, construction laws have changed so dramatically that you don't have many serious fires. And a lot of them have their own private protection like sprinkler systems and smoke detection devices and all this so most major fires don't become major fires anymore. But, one of the dramatic changes is now, is the medical aspects of the Fire Department.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's what I was about to ask, because there are not as many fires but you still have car accidents and medical emergencies and things such as that.
MR. MCGUIRE: We went from an average of probably a half a dozen or eight calls a day, now they're doing, probably, well, being out of it for a few years, I'm not familiar, but before I left the big changeover, we were making an average of 15 to 20 calls a day, a shift.
 MR. MCDANIEL: Now, this is medical...  medical calls included.
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, that's all... yeah, most of them are medical calls. Every time that the county ambulance service, and by the way, the Anderson County administers the emergency ambulance service in the city as well as the rest of the county, but they only have two people that are on a piece of equipment. So, the nearest fire company to where the call originates responds along with another vehicle, another emergency vehicle, we call the rescue truck which has a lot of specialized equipment and medical equipment on it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: So we have four, at least four men from the Fire Department responding on every emergency call that the ambulance service goes out on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. MCGUIRE: Probably more than 50% of those calls, we wouldn't be needed, but if you were needed, you needed to be there. And quite often we... if we're closer to the emergency than the ambulance service is, and, by the way, they're down in the Robertsville Road area.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, exactly, down by Grove Center.
MR. MCGUIRE: Right, in one of the old alarm buildings the Fire Department used during the early days, that little brick building in Grove Center. But we will arrive at the scene before they do, so that, my wife said before we started, said don't be pointing my fingers. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: That's ok. I don't care, you go right ahead.
MR. MCGUIRE: I get excited sometimes (laughter)
MR. MCDANIEL: That's ok, that's quite all right.
MR. MCGUIRE: So we have to ...administering the first emergency care until the ambulance service arrives so a lot of our training now is in that general area. And we have had people who took a second job at the hospital working in the emergency room and they were able to do a lot of work that the emergency personnel in real, you know ...
MR. MCDANIEL: When did that change? When did that happen that the Fire Department started responding to every ambulance call.
MR. MCGUIRE: Oh, let me think for just a minute. Well, it was when the county took over ... 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see...
MR. MCGUIRE: ... Shortly after the county took over the ambulance service.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. MCGUIRE: You know, in the early days, the funeral... funeral homes provided ambulance service.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. MCGUIRE: Oh, yes, yes. You don't remember that?
MR. MCDANIEL: No, I don't remember... that was before my time.
MR. MCGUIRE: And they kept an emergency ambulance, which sometimes they used for other purposes, but they kept it available.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. MCGUIRE: The people weren't trained, you know, they had a little first aid training maybe from the Red Cross or something, but ...
MR. MCDANIEL: They were... they were just to get people to the hospital, weren't they?
MR. MCGUIRE: They were transporters, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Transporters.
MR. MCGUIRE: Very little first aid. No such thing as CPR or that type of thing in those days.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: But that all... that all changed.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you retired in '94.
MR. MCGUIRE: That's correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: And with 30 years of service in the Oak Ridge Fire Department.
MR. MCGUIRE: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: You decided these were great stories you wanted to write in your book and so you wrote the book and it's called?
MR. MCGUIRE: The Oak Ridge Fire Department: A History.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok, and when did you finish that? When did you... when did that come out?
MR. MCGUIRE: I believe it was 1996. I was over a year researching and writing the book.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, yeah. So what have you done since then? What do you do to keep busy?
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, you wouldn't believe it. You wonder, after you retire, how that you ever managed, you know, because seems like I'm busier now than when I was working in the Fire Department. A unique thing about the fire service is that most of the men who are involved in the firefighting companies, they have a secondary job.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok. Is it just because, I mean, it just doesn't pay very well?
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, there are multiple reasons.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: You have time that you need to be occupying yourself. And a peculiar aspect about a fireman is that he has to be so diverse in his abilities that... they're trained, you know, it's just a unique thing that some of them get into construction business, well all kinds of things. Everything in the world. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MR. MCGUIRE: And so, most of them do have secondary jobs, so many different areas. One thing earlier that we were talking about, we stated that the firefighting people in, you know, the company, people in the Fire Department, worked a 24 hour shift every other day. Well, actually, we were working well over 72 hours a week.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MR. MCGUIRE: That was considered what someone out in the industry would be working 40 hours a week.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, when we got this Fire Chief, Jack Lee, from Florida -- he was a training officer down there -- and he was up-to-date and modern and a young man and he immediately went to work to change that. So, now, the men work every third day.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MR. MCGUIRE: They work 24 hours on
MR. MCDANIEL: So they work 24 hours and then are off 48.
MR. MCGUIRE: Are off 48.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. MCGUIRE: So a lot of them get in the construction business. I've roofed houses, been a roofer and a painter. I did more painting than anything. A framer... (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: One interesting thing, a little story I might tell, a number of us, the younger men who hired into the department after I did, we kind of formed a cooperative.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MR. MCGUIRE: Some of them were electricians and we had a plumber and all different kinds of building and tradespeople and we just, it just kind of evolved that one of the young men was building a new house for himself so we just all fell in, volunteered and we got together we did practically all the labor on his house.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, that evolved into another one and, finally, I guess there was about a dozen of us that just cooperated together, didn't keep time, didn't... no pay, no money exchanged hands or anything we just helped each other.
MR. MCDANIEL: You just helped each other.
MR. MCGUIRE: In a cooperative and provided most of the labor. This house that we're in right now is one of those houses.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? It was kind of that brotherhood, wasn't it?
MR. MCGUIRE: Oh, the camaraderie in the Fire Department is one that's just... you wouldn't believe. It's as close as any kind of career you could get into.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, I imagine it's because, you know, not everybody that goes to work literally puts their life in their co-workers hands.
MR. MCGUIRE: Yeah, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: And in the Fire Department, you do.
MR. MCGUIRE: You better have some friends that have you back. (laughter)
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. MCGUIRE: And OSHA, now, has -- and that's another big change in the Fire Department. Usually, when the first company responded to the scene of a fire, we... we were there, we were dressed when we arrived with our turnout clothes and we laid lines. We had three, occasionally we'd have four people on the company, but most of the time there was only three people. One of them was driving the equipment, one of them was the supervisor and the other was the firefighter.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: Of course, the supervisor, all he did was lead. He thought fire was for firefighters.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MR. MCGUIRE: We would enter the building and, especially if there was any kind of probability at all that there was someone possibly inside the building...
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: I mean, we went into that building and were hunting that person. Well, OSHA, a few years before I retired, tried to dramatically change the fire service thinking of the safety of the firefighters.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: Ok, they have a rule, an OSHA rule now that if a company arrives at the scene, it's unlawful for them to enter that building until another company arrives to back them up that has to be suited up with their breathing apparatus standing by with charged lines ready to go in to ...
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. MCGUIRE: And that was a big subject, a big question in the minds of the men. It's been the source of the topic of a lot of conversations. "What would you do?" Well, I won't answer that question directly, but if you put yourself in that position, and there's the possibility that there may be children in that building, you're there, you have the breathing equipment on, I wouldn't say that I would not enter the building and I wouldn't say that I would enter the building. But you can imagine, though.
MR. MCDANIEL: We can figure that out.

MR. MCGUIRE: These guys are known for going into an emergency when everyone else is fleeing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. MCGUIRE: They're not going to stand at the entrance to that building waiting on another company to arrive when they think that there might be a child in there that could be saved.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, sure. Exactly.
MR. MCGUIRE: I mean, if you're that type of person that would do that, you need to be in another vocation. You don't need to be in ... (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: So, ok, so let's talk real quick about ... you know, you said you moved to Oak Ridge early in your fire career. Where did you live there?
MR. MCGUIRE: Well, the city had a regulation at that time that any city employee, other than the department heads, within a year from the time they were employed, they had a residency requirement that we were obligated, in fact, they said you'd be terminated if you didn't move into the city.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, exactly.
MR. MCGUIRE: So, I lived... we moved into the city... Well, like I say, we had a couple of children that were in school at that time so we waited until the end of the school year and then we purchased a house on Warrior Circle, one of the old duplexes, and we converted it into a one-family structure.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, where did you say it was? Warrior Circle is?
MR. MCGUIRE: On Warrior Circle, off West Outer Drive down near Illinois Avenue.

MR. MCDANIEL: That's right, that's right. Exactly. And how long did you stay there?
MR. MCGUIRE: Fifteen years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Fifteen years, and then did you build this house?
MR. MCGUIRE: We did. Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok. So I guess that rule went away or did you have... had you been there long enough to where you could...?
MR. MCGUIRE: No. The rule was disbanded. They did away with it. There... (laughs) some of the older men, the interesting people that we've talked about that were there in the early days, of course, at that time, they couldn't move in to the city.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. MCGUIRE: They wouldn't allow them to, because everything's set up on a priority.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: And a gentleman who lives in Clinton and has his own residence would not have priority even if he was a policeman or a fireman or a guard or whatever, he did not have priority over an engineer or a physicist or a chemist or someone coming from Pennsylvania or Chicago or some place so they, those people had priority, so they weren't allowed to move in. Well, then, after the big lay off...
MR. MCDANIEL: Uh-huh...They needed to fill those houses.
MR. MCGUIRE: They needed to fill those houses and so the city said, "Well if you make your ..." the council did, the old, early council said, "If you make your money here you're gonna spend your money here."
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MR. MCGUIRE: But, now, there was ways to get around that by some of those old people. That's some of the interesting stories. We had one real interesting gentleman, Slim Miller, from Lenoir City. (laughs) He's dead now so we can talk about him without a lawsuit. (laughter) But he bought property in Oak Ridge down in the Highland View area where the old Highland View Elementary School was, and he... he was an electrician by trade before he came to the Fire Department, and he owned an appliance store in Lenoir City. And he had a telephone put in in his name and had the mail set up to be delivered in his name. He put timers on his lighting system so in the evening they would automatically come on at a certain time and go off in the morning and he never lived... He probably didn't live six or seven nights in that house the whole time 'til he retired. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? Oh, wow.
MR. MCGUIRE: And then another group of people, there was four of them, I think, rented an apartment in Monticello Apartments down in the Jefferson area. And the strange thing was when they turned in their forms, they all had the same address, the same telephone number, everything in one of those little one-bedroom apartments, down Monticello Apartments. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, my goodness.
MR. MCGUIRE: But, we became acquainted, and good friends with some of the city councilmen and they felt like that this wasn't -- it's kind of invading a person's rights, an employee's rights to have to live in...
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. MCGUIRE: And every time that they called in people that were off duty in a large emergency, why, they always got plenty of response. They weren't reluctant to respond and just within a matter of a half hour or less, why, we had a full complement of people in the fire stations to protect the rest of the city, so.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, exactly, exactly. When you left the Fire Department... You said when you came... When you came in 1964, it had 42 people.
MR. MCGUIRE: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: When you left in 1994, how many employees were there?
MR. MCGUIRE: I... I'd have to do some calculating, but I think there was about 75.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok, about 75, so it about doubled, I guess, over the course of those 30 years.
MR. MCGUIRE: Right. And now, though, since I left, a big change was made because of the situation down at K-25 when they started disassembling and, you know, carried away all that property.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: They had... They still have to have emergency services down there such as the Fire Department
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MR. MCGUIRE: So they contracted, DOE contracted with the city, to take over ...
MR. MCDANIEL: The fire station.
MR. MCGUIRE: ...that fire protection. Right. And so they kept the old building that was the fire headquarters down there and we moved a company down there so they employed a new company so they have one more company now which is three shifts of four men.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MR. MCGUIRE: So, that's about 15 people or so new employees because of the expansion. Well, that was advantageous to the city because they are receiving money... monies from the federal government for maintaining that fire protection down there. But we were also about to have to build -- well, there was a deadline that was set that we would have had to gone farther west and set up a new fire district and a new fire station.
MR. MCDANIEL: Because of Rarity Ridge.
MR. MCGUIRE: The travel distance to the ...
MR. MCDANIEL: To the new subdivisions.
MR. MCGUIRE: ... to the new subdivisions that were being built out there. And, in fact, there's one that's, I understand, across the river from K-25. What was the company, the aircraft company, that was going to use that for a testing ground over there and they'd already bought the property and had done some testing. And they incorporated that. Well, that didn't go on for a very long period of time. I guess the federal government ceased the contract or found it unnecessary or whatever, and they built a housing development out there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, exactly.
MR. MCGUIRE: And that is within the city limits of Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's within the city limits of Oak Ridge.
MR. MCGUIRE: I guess that's the only place outside the city, I mean, across the river boundaries.
MR. MCDANIEL: And it's Rarity Ridge, that's that Rarity Ridge, yeah.
MR. MCGUIRE: Exactly. And I don't think it's developed yet into what they were expecting.
MR. MCDANIEL: It's not, but there's houses out there, I mean, you know, they …
MR. MCGUIRE: They're paying taxes to the City of Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, they're paying taxes, so there are people living out there.
MR. MCGUIRE: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: So...
MR. MCGUIRE: So it was advantageous to the city in different ways. But it did cause some social changes in the Fire Department because these people were working different shifts out there. They didn't actually know what fighting a conflagration was because, as we stated earlier, they were fire prevention people, you know, basically, and so, it was a culture change for them and also to the men who were in the department.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: And, of course, the people in the city, the firefighters in the city, had to get a special security clearance -- a Q clearance -- to be able to work in that station out there so it made some real changes.
MR. MCDANIEL: It was kind of ... it was a big change I would imagine.
MR. MCGUIRE: And actually, our chief now was chief out there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MR. MCGUIRE: And when he came into the city, he came in as an assistant chief's position, kind of a training officer, I guess, or whatever, shift supervisor, and after Chief Bailey retired, then he became the Chief.
MR. MCDANIEL: So what do you call old firefighters? Is there a nickname for them?
MR. MCGUIRE: (laughs) Well, Smoke Eaters...
MR. MCDANIEL: Smoke Eaters?
MR. MCGUIRE: Yeah (laughs) I guess that's a name.
MR. MCDANIEL: So are there a bunch of you guys still around that you were... that you worked with and you get together? You talked about, you know, having your little cooperative, but, I mean, you know, is that kind of a fraternity?
MR. MCGUIRE: Oh, definitely is. But, now, the last member of the Oak Ridge Fire Department who was employed in the early days, 1942, it's only been a couple of years since he passed away.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. MCGUIRE: Yeah, he was one of the younger men that came to the department and he was only about 20 years old or so when he was employed.
MR. MCDANIEL: I see... One of the original ... One of the originals.
MR. MCGUIRE: Ed Laws from Newport.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. MCGUIRE: And he moved back to Newport after he retired and his wife passed away. Back with some of his old cock-fighting buddies, I guess. (laughter)
MR. MCDANIEL: So you... Ok, so let me get back to your house. You lived on Warrior Circle you said for about 15 years.
MR. MCGUIRE: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: And then did you build this house then, is that what?
MR. MCGUIRE: That's right.
MR. MCDANIEL: You built this house. Now, you said that your wife had passed away, is that correct?
MR. MCGUIRE: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: When did she...? When did she die?
MR. MCGUIRE: She died in 1984 and we had lived here less than three years and then she passed away.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. MCGUIRE: Yeah, she had an aneurysm and took her to the hospital and she never did regain consciousness.
MR. MCDANIEL: And, you said you had four daughters, is that correct?
MR. MCGUIRE: Jerri and I had four daughters.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, that's what I mean.
MR. MCGUIRE: All four of the daughters were married. She had seen two of 'em graduate from college and she had attended all their weddings and she lived to see her... the three oldest grandchildren.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? Now, are they in this area or are they kind of spread out now?
MR. MCGUIRE: One lives in Powell, one lives in Karns, one lives on the property over here -- the cooperative, as you stated.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. MCGUIRE: I hired them to build, or we hired them to build her house but some of that was volunteered, too -- she was one of their pets, and so, little special things they did for her.
MR. MCDANIEL: Of course.
MR. MCGUIRE: Now, two years later, I remarried and the lady I married had three children. She was divorced with three children, and the youngest hadn't started school yet and the oldest one was in fourth grade, I believe.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow.
MR. MCGUIRE: So, I've raised two families.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, you have, haven't you?
MR. MCGUIRE: And let me mention this: Her oldest son, the oldest child, he went to Clinton High School and was on the football team that played on the state championship a few years ago and he was working for UPS and his wife was a school teacher, she was working with the Knox County school system, in the elementary... the new elementary school. They had really worked hard to establish themselves and they have two daughters. They had bought a new house over in Karns, you know, the typical American family, you know.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MR. MCGUIRE: They went on a mission trip -- and the church has been a vital part of my life throughout my whole life. And they were raised in the church that you turned around in the parking lot finding your way over here...
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. MCGUIRE: They went on a one-week missionary trip to Guatemala with their church and they felt so convicted to become missionaries on that trip that they came back and they prayed and mulled and discussed and they decided to become missionaries. They sold their house, they dispersed all their belongings, quit their... resigned from their jobs, both of them making ...
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah. Good jobs...
MR. MCGUIRE: Making good money, and took their daughters and they're in their third year in Guatemala right now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. MCGUIRE: My wife just got back from a trip down there a couple of weeks ago.
MR. MCDANIEL: My goodness! Well, you know, when that happens, you know, that's... that's... you can't question it, I don't guess.
MR. MCGUIRE: We weren't a part of the decision. They came and visited us one afternoon and said, "Well, we got some news for you," (laughs) And, of course, it floored us, you know.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure it did. 
MR. MCGUIRE: But, I'm just as proud of 'em as I can be. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, sure. I'm sure. Well, Mr. McGuire -- Don -- I appreciate you taking time to talk with us. This was very interesting about your life in Oak Ridge and your life in the Oak Ridge Fire Department and we want to encourage everybody to go to the library and read your book, don't we? 
MR. MCGUIRE: I would like that. They're not available any more. We've exhausted the supply that we had and I felt like that it wasn't of interest enough to have it ... a new publication, you know, so. But to my knowledge we left a few copies in the, what do they call it? The Atomic City ...?
MR. MCDANIEL: The Oak Ridge Room.
MR. MCGUIRE: The Oak Ridge Room, historical. And there's a lot of history of the early Fire Department as well it incorporates some of the early history of the city because that was all intermingled.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MR. MCGUIRE: Early on, the City of Oak Ridge Fire Department furnished fire protection for the Y-12 Plant. It was under construction, you know, and some of the other outlying areas, and then they developed their own Fire Department and incorporated it after they started production. 
MR. MCDANIEL: All right!
MR. MCGUIRE: It's been an interesting life and I wouldn't trade it for being President of the United States.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, I don't blame you at all. Thank you so much for taking time to talk with us. I appreciate it.
MR. MCGUIRE: Oh, I've enjoyed it and I hope it will be enjoyable to the people who might be watching it later on.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm certain it will be. Good job. Thank you.
MR. MCGUIRE: Thank you.
[End of Interview]