This is the third article in recognizing people who I believe have impacted our community and are great role models.
Pennsylvania has a great heritage of volunteer firefighters. Benjamin Franklin himself founded the first non-profit, volunteer fire company, the Union Fire Company, in Philadelphia in 1736. This tradition continued for centuries; by the 1970s, there were over 300,000 volunteer firefighters in Keystone State.
But, since that time, the numbers have steadily been going lower and lower. Today, there are roughly 37,000 volunteer firefighters in our state. What makes the situation even more dire is that volunteer fire companies have a much higher call volume and dangers that those fifty-plus years ago could not have imagined.
Many of those who are still around because of a heritage behind them. One of those in our region is the Fire Chief for the Clinton Township Volunteer Fire Company (CTVFC), Todd Winder. His grandfather, George Emerson Winder, was one of the fire company’s charter members when it started in 1946. His father, Wilbur (Butch) Winder, was an active firefighter with CTVFC for 30 years. Todd greatly admired both his father and grandfather and became a junior fireman at age 14 in 1984.
When he first joined the company back in the 1980s, it was a real mano-a-mano environment. Some of Todd’s mentors were forty years his senior. It was more on-the-job training in those days and was taken very seriously. Mistakes were treated in a way that they would never happen again. Living around the fire company, the seniors would continually teach Todd and the other juniors the ropes, even how to run pumps and drive the trucks (but not to a real fire). Todd did anything and everything that the company required, and through it all knew this was a life-calling.
Through the next fifteen years, Todd Winder continued to learn through official training courses and gained the respect of the other members. By 1999, he had accumulated the hundreds of hours necessary for the top job. In January of that year, the members of the CTVFC voted Todd Winder to become their Fire Chief. And every year since then, he has been voted into that position again — with 2024 being his silver jubilee — his 25th year as Fire Chief for the CTVFC.
It is not an honorary position but a hard-working one. The Clinton Township Volunteer Fire Company is responsible for emergencies in an area covering 99.4 square miles, an area that does not just have homes and farms but also churches, stores, heavy industries, a public school, a state women’s prison, a county landfill, a railroad line, a major section of state highway, a large section of state forest, seventeen miles of the Susquehanna River, a private airport, a municipal golf course, a natural gas electrical plant, natural gas and petroleum pipelines, an Amish community and even a drive-in theater!
Todd Winder must supervise the company’s response to every possible emergency imaginable: house fires, farm fires, industrial fires, forest fires, landfill fires, road accidents, water rescues, railroad accidents, water recoveries, and much more.
Todd had to go through hundreds and hundreds of hours of training to know the right way to respond to these events, but he also had to supervise the training that the members needed to function effectively as a team in these events. Even the care and equipping of the various vehicles — the rescue truck, aerial truck, brush truck, water truck, etc., require continual focus, which the chief must oversee.
The CTVFC also has a very active EMT unit with two ambulances on duty 24/7 and an unbelievable call volume. For 40 hours a week, Monday-Friday, 9-5, the EMTs are paid, but for the other 104 hours of the week, the company responds with EMTs that volunteer, just like firefighters. The combination of EMT calls and fire calls has averaged over 700 emergencies a year in Clinton Township for the last five years, and this year’s call volume has been so high that it may hit 800. (This is an average of at least two calls every day of the year!) Todd Winder has over 400 responses in the past year, and in his volunteer work as an EMT, he has averaged 167 calls a year for the past ten years!
I have watched Todd in action for the past eight years as a Clinton Township Volunteer Fire Company member. I also saw him respond to emergencies at my home for my mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, and yes, even myself on one occasion. I am extremely grateful for his commitment and professionalism.
Yes, it is true; he would never be mistaken for a diplomat. Todd gets very annoyed by those who make decisions or even express opinions that he knows are not helpful, practical, or downright faulty. But I give this man a wide berth in light of his tremendous commitment to our community. I know there are people alive today who could very well not be alive were it not for Todd Winder.
