Firefighter still going strong after 50 years on the job

EAST HAZEL CREST, Ill. -- In his youth, a "giant" cop haunted William Vallow and his pals.

The cop told Vallow to stay in his own town, and he was right. That was where he found his career as a firefighter and a home to raise four daughters.

Choosing a path to follow

At age 16, he decided to follow his father Buck Vallow's lead to become a volunteer firefighter.

He remembers his first fire 1951 and the faces of neighbors who have tragically needed his help.

He helped save a man's life using the "closed chest massage," now know as CPR. That man is still alive today.

Vallow survived the days of leather-lunged firefighting. "In those days, the hero was the guy with the most soot on his face," he said

Fifty years later, he's still at it, chief of the volunteer fire department for the second time.

The only break in his firefighting career was a two-year stint in the Army between 1958 and 1960. He headed the department for 20 years between 1966 and 1986 before returning to the firefighter ranks. And when the department needed his leadership again in 1996, he obliged.

Vallow, 66, revels in how fire departments have changed over the years, and how he's had a hand in making rescue missions safer for his colleagues. When the blaring emergency siren breaks the small-town silence these days, Vallow rushes to a fire house that bears his name. Village leaders last month named the public safety building after their beloved volunteer.

"It was the greatest thing. I was speechless," he said. "It's really something, because I have some kind of commitment to the people in our little town. They've always been so good to us."

Those people are his family members, friends and neighbors who have called for help and found Vallow at their doorstep. He was the first to respond to his grandmother's fatal heart attack. But he was there as a firefighter first.

"You respond to the emergency, and you do the emergency accordingly," he said. "When you settle down, your brain and heart mix. It gets to your voice box, and you get choked up. It's very tough. But you're there to do a job."