Leafing through a musty ledger book from the 1950s, Brent Webster pauses, squints at the slanted Spencerian script, then reads off a series of names.
“Clyde Blevins, Raymond Elkins, Ernest Johnson, John Clark, Charlie Justice, Joe Johnson, Jack Kelly, Pete Kelly, Herb Thompson, Bob Young . . . they are all among the original members of the Westwood Fire Department,”?he says. “Without them, and others, there wouldn’t be a fire department. You can have all the money and equipment in the world, but without people, you wouldn’t have anything,” he said.
That is why Webster, who is the Westwood Volunteer Fire Department chief, and other members of the department are planning to create a memorial wall dedicated to the memory of their deceased predecessors — those who, in the parlance of firefighters, have received their final call.