Roy and Ted Wagner were there at the beginning when their father played a big part in their central New Jersey hometown forming a volunteer fire company — and they're still going strong half a century after joining the ranks themselves.
Long after following their father into service with the Plainsboro Volunteer Fire Company, the identical twin brothers were feted by colleagues this week for dedicating the last 50 years to their community.
The Wagners' involvement with the fire company actually dates back even further than those five decades since they became full members at age 18 in 1968. Tack on a few teenage years spent as junior firefighters plus all the time they spent at the firehouse as boys and you're looking at something closer to 60 years.
"Basically, our father got us involved in it, just tagging along with him as they were working on the original building," Ted said in a recent interview with Firehouse.com. "My brother and I spent a lot of time up at the firehouse as the building was being constructed, and even before that building was dedicated in 1962, me and my brother just kind of became part of the family."
Ted Wagner Sr. was a founding member of the Plainsboro Fire Company, joining six months after it was incorporated, and he actually installed all the plumbing in the original firehouse while other members with trade skills took on various jobs to help in the construction.
"Back then everyone was in the trades," Ted said. "My father was a plumber, so we had members at that time who were plumbers, electricians, carpenters... and they pretty much built the original firehouse."
In those early days in the 1960s, firefighters in Plainsboro were riding out on calls in a used 1940 American LaFrance pumper that could pump 500 gallons per minute. Before they built that first firehouse in 1962, the men were using a cinder block building — which, by the way, is still standing behind the town's hardware store — and kept the water in the trucks from freezing during the winter months with a coal-fired pipeless heater.
A rural farming community at that time, the Plainsboro Fire Company enlisted the help of a local farm to alert members to a fire with the use of a steam whistle that was primarily intended to alert workers to starting time, the end of the lunch break, and quitting time.
"What would happen when a fire call came in was they always had a fireman on duty in the power house at the farm, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year," Roy said.
"So somebody would call the power house and the on-duty operator, if he heard the phone ring, he would just give continuous short blasts on the steam whistle and then somebody would have to call over to the farm to find out the location of the fire call."
Eventually, a siren was purchased and installed at the state police barracks, so fire calls would then come in to the state police and they would sound the siren. But someone still had to call the barracks to find out where the fire was.
Plainsboro Township, which sits about halfway between New York City and Philadelphia in Middlesex County, has grown somewhat in the ensuing years but still remains a small community of around 23,000 people.
A lot has changed for the firefighters in the town in that time — they're now alerted to a fire call on their cell phones, for example — and the biggest difference for the brothers since 1968 is the big jump in call volume.
"In our town specifically, a busy year was 30 or 35 calls back in the beginning," Ted said. "Now if we have 35 calls a month we're thinking, 'What happened? Why aren't the pagers going off?' Just the sheer call volume."
The types of calls they respond to have also changed quite a bit. The fire company doesn't handle EMS runs for the town, though it may occasionally assist medical personnel when requested, but the circumstances surrounding fire responses have changed due to modern advances in building materials and prevention measures like sprinkler systems. For example, the local farms no longer have makeshift camps for seasonal workers, who occasionally set their housing on fire.
"In the early days, you had more fires," Roy said. "You had more structure fires, barn fires, that type of thing. Today, like everybody else, the majority of our calls are fire alarms or system malfunctions or careless cooking as opposed to back then when you didn't have quite as much technology on the alarms."
"You just ran more fire calls."
Along the way, the brothers still had jobs and personal lives to maintain but were always ready to drop everything and head out on a call.
Ted, who is now retired after a long career at fragrance and flavor company Firmenich, married his wife Judy in 1974 and fathered two sons with her — both of whom are now firefighters. Roy, who is still working a day job at a power equipment business, married his wife Victoria in 1975 and has a daughter and a son, the latter a firefighter as well.
There were occasional birthday parties to miss and family events to depart because of fire calls, and even a few simple nights out for dinner with loved ones.
"I couldn't tell you how may times that's happened," Roy said with a laugh. "You leave the wife at the restaurant and go to a fire call and come back. You go out for a meal and wind up bringing it home in the styrofoam. It doesn't quite taste the same. But she's always accepted it."
Ted, who graciously spoke to Firehouse.com while on vacation in Tennessee, said that even before departing for his trip with his wife that he went out on a call before coming back for a few more hours of sleep prior to departing.
"I went out and did the call, came back and went to sleep and then got up at four o'clock in the morning to go on vacation, so it's just something I still enjoy doing. I still enjoy serving, and hopefully I'll be able to do it for a few more years and see where we go."
The major point that both Ted and Roy stressed was how all the attention being paid to them of late because of their unique anniversary pales in comparison to the attention they believe the fire company as a whole deserves.
They both estimate that they've been on thousands of calls together over the years, but they were obviously never on their own and cherish the people they've worked alongside and the relationships they've built along the way.
"My brother and I are not the ones who keep this fire company going," Ted said. "It takes a group of people. It takes chief officers, people who take care of the building, and we have members that get on the truck and go out."
"It's not just about him and me. It's a whole group of people that make the organization go."
