A Lifetime of Fighting Fires

Plain Dealing Fire Chief Harold Purcell, 1984. Source: The Plain Dealing Progress 

For over fifty years, Harold Purcell of Plain Dealing served his community as a volunteer firefighter. He started volunteering for the department in 1934 as a young man, and by 1941 he was appointed as chief. In an interview, Purcell recalled boyhood memories of a fire that was fought when a bucket brigade passed water from a ditch to a store located at the old S and S Grocery site. He also remembered when Plain Dealing got its first fire hydrants around 1929.

Before the town got its first real fire truck in 1946, Purcell remembers them using a pickup truck which was also used for collecting garbage. If a fire call came in while the truck was making the garbage collection rounds, the trash was dumped in the street, and the call was answered.

Plain Dealing Volunteer Fire Department's first real fire truck. Kneeling is L.M. Harville. The front row (L to R) is Seth  Arnold, Bill Harville, Clayton Manning, Howard Wheeler, and fire chief Harold Purcell. The back row (L to R) is Elmer Spears, Henry Wheeler, Carol Butler, Bub Goodwin, and Oscar Harville. Maurice McCall Collection: 2000.064.003.

Members of the department were expected to show up for every call, and if they didn’t, they had to pay the price. Sometimes that meant the other members would go wake him up to make coffee for the entire crew. Other times it meant holding ‘kangaroo court,’ where the absent member would be found guilty and sentenced to buy the rest of the crew milkshakes. This happened to former Mayor Leon Sanders when he was a member of the volunteer fire department.

Over the years, the alarm sounded when a fire call came in evolved. In the early days, it included the firing of guns and ringing church bells. When Purcell joined the department, the town Marshall, O.C. Coleman would receive a call from the telephone operator and sound the alarm, a shrill electric siren attached to his automobile. When he retired in 1986, firefighters were alerted to a blaze by a phone system and a City Hall alarm.

The fire at the Bell Hotel was the first fire call answered using the first real fire truck, a 500-gallon pumper. Luckily all of the hotel occupants escaped the two-story building. The nearby buildings were saved, but the hotel was not rebuilt. When Purcell retired, the department had two pumper trucks and a tanker.

Purcell started keeping a record of fires in 1953. By 1986 his records indicated that 457 fires have occurred in the Plain Dealing city limits and 1,235 out of town, all falling under the responsibility of Plain Dealing’s volunteer fire department. During that time, some of the major blazes were the Legion Hut in 1955; Plain Dealing High School in 1963; Carrie Martin High School in 1968; First Presbyterian Church in 1970; Stacy’s Restaurant in 1985, and the tragic fire in 1983 when seven people died.

At the end of each year, the volunteer firefighters had an annual supper around Christmas time, at which checks were passed out. The volunteers were paid a small amount of money for each fire call answered. At Purcell’s last supper with the department, before retiring, he was presented with a plaque with an inscription that read “Loved by all the citizens of Plain Dealing,” under that, it read “In appreciation for 49 years of service as a volunteer fireman, 1938-1987.” Mayor Leon Sanders read a proclamation at the dinner declaring Purcell chief emeritus for life.

In researching the Plain Dealing Volunteer Fire Department, this writer discovered that Purcell actually began his service as a volunteer firefighter in 1934. According to an article in “The Plain Dealing Progress,” Oct. 3, 1934, which named him and others as newly selected members of the department. The plaque presented to him should have read, “In appreciation for 53 years of service as a volunteer fireman, 1934-1987.”

By: Amy Robertson