By Gillian Graham

Staff Writer

   John “Smokey” Chandler retired from the Portland Fire Department wearing the helmet of his late father. Now, the helmet rests in a place of honor in Chandler’s fire museum, created to honor a profession he has dedicated much of his life to.  

  “[The helmet] is one of the very few things I cherish that belonged to my dad,” he says.

  Chandler created the museum in his Buxton home to display hundreds of fire related artifacts and memorabilia he has collected over the years. As he leads the way to the door of the museum, Chandler says he knows his room is not the biggest around, but is a labor of love nonetheless. 

  Two pairs of fire boots stand at attention outside of the bright red “Fire Headquarters” door leading to the one-room museum. Nearby sits a 75-year-old bench from the old Munjoy Hill fire station in Portland.

  Chandler, 63, opens the door to reveal a brightly lit room with displays of artifacts, a couch with fire-themed blankets tossed over the back and dozens of framed photos and paintings on the walls. A wood and glass cabinet – which Chandler built – contains 11 rows of model fire trucks, some old, some new. Axes, hose nozzles, vintage Tonka fire trucks, toys and fire hydrants line the perimeter of the room. 

   The walls are bordered by hundreds of fire and police department badges – from as far away as Mexico, California and England – collected by Chandler and his wife Dianne wherever they travel. In one corner, a desk from the officer’s room at the Munjoy Hill Station displays a call book from 1959.

   Across the room, display cases of Chandler’s more fragile artifacts display a delegate badge from the first Maine State Firemen’s Convention in 1887 and an 1888 souvenir book from the Portland Fire Department. He opens the case to show a duplicate copy of a 1915 receipt from R.S. McWilliams Horseshoeing, which indicates the Portland Fire Department paid $14 to have its horses shod.

Chandler’s cherished helmet sits on top of a display case, nestled among commemorative steins, music boxes, fire trucks and a phone shaped like a call box. Nearby is an original fire alarm box, which Chandler restored by sandblasting and repainting by hand.

   Chandler officially opened the museum in September while hosting a reunion for more than 100 retired firefighters. Five years ago, he decided to host the reunions after reading obituaries for former colleagues. He says many of the people who attended the reunions hadn’t seen each other in 25 or 30 years. 

   At this year’s reunion, two of Chandler’s former colleagues, 92-year-old Bob Callaghan and 80-year-old Jimmy Hughes, cut the ribbon to officially open the museum. Chandler says the response of his friends to the museum has been positive.

   “They were just overwhelmed to see I had that much stuff. It brought back a lot of memories for a lot of guys and that was the best part of it,” he says. “It’s very important that people come in and reminisce.”

Sitting at his kitchen table, Chandler reminisces about his time with the fire department, the brotherhood he remembers fondly and the father who inspired his career. 

Chandler became an Explorer volunteer with the South Portland Fire Department in 1958 at 14. Though he couldn’t go into burning buildings, he rode on fire trucks and helped by pulling hoses. A year later, he was a full-fledged volunteer, following in the footsteps of his father, Lawrence, and older brother, Victor. 

   “It runs through my family. My dream was always to be a professional firefighter,” he said.

   In 1960, Chandler entered his first burning building – a home on Stanford Street in South Portland where a kitchen fire gutted two rooms.

“When we were able to gain entrance to the room and see the fire rolling over the ceiling, it was like ‘Wow!’” he says. 

  That fire was also the first time Chandler experienced the adrenalin rush firefighters experience every time they enter a burning building.

  “I don’t know that anyone could ever deny that fact, even today,” he says. 

  Lawrence Chandler died of cancer on July 1, 1965, the same week Chandler graduated from high school. After serving in the Navy from 1966 to 1968, Chandler returned to Maine to fulfill his dream of becoming a fulltime firefighter. Though he had passed South Portland’s firefighter test, he was a half-inch too short to be hired on full time. Instead, he was able to work day-to-day covering shifts for other fulltime firefighters. 

  Chandler passed the Portland test in 1969 by putting half-inch lifts in his tube socks to meet the height requirement. When he began as a fulltime firefighter, Chandler says he was paid $88 to work 56 hours each week.  

  “I found the job I liked and that’s what I stayed with,” he says.

  Flipping through a pile of old newspaper clippings, Chandler pulls out a photo from a fire scene, finds Engine 4 and points to the barely visible firefighters holding a hose next to it. One of those men was Chandler, battling the “devastating” Grand Trunk Fire in Portland in 1969.

  Chandler says that fire at a railroad yard by the waterfront was so hot and intense it could only be fought from the outside with a large volume of water. Injuries were avoided in large part because the department was able to prevent a large grain elevator from igniting.

   “If the grain elevator had blown, it would have wiped the Eastern Prom off the map,” he says. “It would have killed a lot of firefighters.”

   Chandler says there was a second fire at the same location on July 27, 1970 which was as “complicated” to fight as the first. He says it was fortunate there were no injuries or death at those fires, but he did lose colleagues during his career.

   Losing a fellow firefighter is something that always stays with you, Chandler says. He was one of the first to arrive on the scene of a 1980 three-alarm fire at The Phoenix Nightclub on Oak Street that killed 26-year-old firefighter Joseph C. Cavallaro Jr. Chandler says another friend and colleague, Frank Cowan, died of a heart attack related to a fire at the Kabob-N-Curry Restaurant on Congress Street in 1993. 

   “It’s definitely like someone is taking a piece of you and taking it away forever. There’s always a place in your heart,” Chandler says. “It’s very tragic. I don’t know how you can describe it in words. It’s part of your extended family. When you live with people day in and day out, sleep in the same room and eat at the same table, it’s a great loss.”

   Chandler says he didn’t want to retire in 2001 with credit for 33 years of service, but his body told him it was time. He misses the work, he says, but finds satisfaction in knowing his career helped people, which he said his father would be proud of. 

   “My whole life has been helping people and that’s what I enjoy most,” he says. “It’s about giving yourself back to the cities and towns, the joy of being able to put smiles on people’s faces, but also being there when there are tears on their faces.”