In a cramped room at the back of the Spokane Fire Department Training Complex, Tom Heckler houses artifacts dating back more than a century.
“They always told me, they can’t build a museum,” Heckler said, seated in a chair next to a humming tower server that fills part of his 300-square-foot exhibit. “But we could build a public education center. And in the public education center, you could have old stuff on display.”
Even that didn’t happen, however, because of a lack of funding.
So now, Heckler opens up his artifacts room in the training center once a week for visitors, mostly former firefighters interested in their department’s history. The city’s recent gift of an out-of-service 1977 American LaFrance fire pumping truck brings Heckler’s number of old engines to four, without a place to display them to the public.