Though he actually retired last April, Greg Gilbertson’s decision to leave the Litchfield Fire Department after 40 years became official Feb. 3 when he celebrated with his firefighting brethren during their annual banquet.
But even after the “official” observance and nearly a year away from the middle-of-the-night fire calls and almost daily questions about fire safety and other topics, Gilbertson’s way of thinking and talking about the fire department hasn’t changed.
It’s still “us” and “we” when talking about the firefighters, and department issues are still most often discussed in the present tense. Kind of a “you can take the man out of the fire department, but you can’t take the fire department out of the man” sort of philosophy that Gilbertson acknowledges he probably will never lose.
And after four decades as a member of the community’s volunteer firefighting team, after seeing men his daughters’ age join the department, after the camaraderie developed, who can blame him?
“We do so many family functions that most of the people on the fire department, their tightest and biggest circle of friends are fire members,” Gilbertson said. “We have a lot of social events to build camaraderie. I would say the first 20 years (he was with the department), we did a pretty good job of it, but the last 20 years that has exploded. I mean, we do so many things.
“I got on the fire department for the excitement, the adventure,” Gilbertson added. “I stayed on the fire department because I enjoyed the camaraderie.”
Gilbertson, 67, reluctantly agreed to an interview about his firefighting career, and only after prefacing it with ground rules that echoed the team philosophy he says he’s always tried to promote among the fire department members.
“It’s not about me, it’s not about me,” he said emphatically as he sat in the fire hall’s meeting room one afternoon last week. “It’s about the fire department and how we’ve changed and how we’ve made so many changes to where we are so family oriented.”
Gilbertson’s firefighting career started with rejection, but it grew into one of the longest in the history of the Litchfield Fire Department, one that included leadership through great change. His 40 years with the department isn’t a record — meeting minutes that date back to the 1800s indicate four or five early members who served 45 years or more — but his 13 years as a fire chief is the longest on record. He served two stints as chief, the first from 2006 to 2012, and the second from 2014 to 2021. With retirement on his mind, he took a step back in 2021, agreeing to serve as assistant chief to help the transition to new chief Kurt Beckstrand.
Four decades, even one filled with as many challenges, stress and tragedies as he’s seen, has gone by relatively quickly, Gilbertson said.
“I enjoyed it,” he said. “It was a challenge, and I enjoyed challenges. But you know, I never had a job that long.”
Gilbertson and his best friend and coworker, Paul Larson, both worked at Dahl Tire at the time. Fire department members, worried that they would get only one full member of the squad, because one would always have to stay behind to work at the business, chose Larson to fill an opening.
Gilbertson had to wait another six months before the next opening, but he applied again. This time, he said, Larson assured other firefighters they both would be available for calls at the same time.
“So then I got on and was accepted,” Gilbertson said. “It seemed like you never got on the first time you would apply. You had to show that you were really interested and really wanted to be on (the department).”
Perhaps the most significant change in firefighting from his early days on the department to the time he retired, Gilbertson said, was the training. His introductory training came from his peers on the department, and it was pretty simplistic, even if entirely logical.
“The old saying then was, ‘Put the wet stuff on the red stuff,’” Gilbertson said.
Today’s training has advanced leaps and bounds beyond those commonsense basics.
“It’s not even close,” Gilbertson said. “Today we fight fires, the fire department fights fires, using science. You pull up to a scene, you analyze and figure out what the fire is doing. And then you work with the fire to put it out.
“You don’t just go in there and spray water on it and put it out,” he continued. “You work through it. It’s a science, you know?”
That science is taught by certified instructors over about four months and 140 hours of training. And these days the firefighters keep up with the science with mandatory monthly training.
Between the training and actual fire calls through the years, Gilbertson has logged thousands of hours on fire department business. Litchfield Fire Department had about 150 calls last year, close to the average in recent years. Using that as reference, and Gilbertson’s estimated 90 percent report rate, it isn’t a stretch to believe he logged more than 4,000 calls in his 40-year career.
“It’s not all fires … there’s alarm calls, car accidents,” Gilbertson said. “We probably average 15 actual fires a year. But there’s been some big ones, like LPC (Litchfield Precision Components) … Arndahl Church, oh, the Darwin Elevator.”
He’s encountered horrific results of fires, including finding the bodies of victims amid rubble. He counts himself fortunate that he’s been able to process those scenes, and move on with a healthy perspective. With the exception of one call.
That was a plane crash about 30 years ago at Hoosier Lake southwest of Litchfield. Members of the department’s dive team, including Gilbertson, had to recover the bodies of four victims when the plane crashed into the ice covered lake.
“Most of that I blacked out. I have no memory of it whatsoever,” he said. “I never had a nightmare or kept me up at night until about five years ago, and for about three nights that I couldn’t get it out of my head.”
He believes those memories might have been touched off by an incident debriefing five years ago. One of the men doing the debriefing was a cousin of a victim in the crash, which came up as they discussed the more recent call.
“There was always new stuff, but it’s never haunted me … other than that one, and it was for a couple of nights,” Gilbertson added. “The stories, there’s a lot of them. Some of them are bad, but there are funny stories too.”
Those stories often come out when firefighters return to the hall after a call and sit around to decompress. Newer members of the department are regaled with memories of their more experienced group.
“The older guys get to tell stories,” Gibertson said. “And, of course, as time goes on, they get embellished a little bit, and it’s all good and everything.”
Those impromptu discussions, as well as planned events have helped to strengthen the bond that all of the firefighting family feel. That’s a big part of what Gilbertson believes keeps the team together, where it’s not uncommon for firefighters to stay with the department for at least 20 years.
It’s also what makes it next to impossible to completely separate himself from the department, even in retirement. He admits that when a call comes in, he still checks to see what it is, and he still makes regular visits to the fire hall where he says with a laugh that they haven’t changed the lock on the door, so it must be OK with current leadership and firefighters.
While retired from the fire department, Gilbertson continued to work as elevator operator at the UFC elevator in Litchfield, where he’s been for 15 years.
He credits his wife, Margi, to whom he’s been married for 44 years, and his now-adult daughters, Anna and Danielle, for his ability to stay on the department for four decades.
“They were very supportive,” he said. “They have to sacrifice a lot. I gotta admit, my first 10-15 years when I was on the fire department, I did not do a good family-fire department balance. I did better the last few years, but I was still down here a lot. And my wife supported me the whole time. She always supported me and the kids supported me.”
