Bob Gerard: Madison’s Retired Fire Chief Is Telling the Story of a Local Hero
Next Thursday, Oct. 27, at 7 p.m., at the Scranton Library, Bob Gerard will deliver a presentation called “The Life of Paul Pavelka,” about a Madison native who left home at an early age for a series of adventures that included flying fighter planes for the French in World War I.
Bob, who has spent his entire life in Madison, has one major thing in common with Pavelka: They both volunteered in risky fields.
Pavelka was a member of the Lafayette Escadrille, a squadron of American pilots who fought for the French while the U.S. was still neutral. Bob was for decades an active member of Madison’s all-volunteer fire department, serving 10 years as the department’s chief.
When Bob runs through highlights of Pavelka’s brief but eventful life, he sounds a little awestruck.
“It’s just an amazing story,” Bob says. “He seemed to go from place to place and just have a real pure adventure.”
Born in Madison in 1892, Pavelka may have been as young as 15 when he left home. Taking jobs in farms, he made his way to the West Coast, where he worked in a lumberyard and then on a ship that transported lumber.
He traveled the world in the Merchant Marine and then the U.S. Navy, after which he worked on one of the first ships transporting Canadian troops to fight in Europe in 1914.
Pavelka decided to stay in Europe and join the French Foreign Legion, going on to see action in the trenches. That experience was “just horrific,” Bob says, and it must have made flying seem more appealing. Pavelka applied for flight school.
When Pavelka got his own plane, he painted it to resemble the markings of a cow and decorated it with his own brand, harking back to his time spent working on farms.
Without spoiling the end of the story for people planning to attend Bob’s presentation, we can say that Pavelka revealed great courage under fire, both on land and in the sky, until he died in an unexpected but heroic way.
A self-described history and aviation buff, Bob, who’s 47, says that when he was a child, his parents owned a copy of As We Were, a history of Madison published to coincide with the U.S. Bicentennial. It included a brief version of Pavelka’s story.
“I probably read that book 15 times,” Bob says, “backwards and forwards.”
Bob became more deeply involved in local history in 2007, when he compiled newspaper clips and photographs for a book commemorating the 100th anniversary of his department, the Madison Hose Company No. 1. He did much of his research at the Charlotte L. Evarts Memorial Archives, in Madison’s Memorial Town Hall.
He joined the archives’ board the next year and is now its president.
In a way, Bob says, his day job, as a licensed land surveyor has helped train him for projects like the Pavelka presentation, both in terms of research and in terms of public speaking.
“I’m in charge of going over the land records, deed copies, deed research,” he says. “If I’m doing a project for someone that requires a variance, I’ll take that plan into town hall and present it at one of the evening meetings.”
Born, raised, and educated in town, Bob says he’s a Madison “lifer.” His daughter, Taylor, who is a sophomore at Hood College, in Frederick, Maryland, attended the same schools Bob did.
“She was in the last class to go through Academy School,” he says.
After graduating from Daniel Hand High School, Bob began working in a surveying company. He learned the trade mostly on the job, along with some college courses.
In his book about the Madison Hose Company, Bob tells of how he first came to volunteer for the department after the “Downtown Fire” of Dec. 28, 1985, which destroyed several Madison businesses.
“My mother had gotten a fire/police scanner for Christmas and heard the initial call for smoke in the building at Sunshine Farms,” he writes. “My dad took my brother and me downtown.”
Bob saw a high school classmate who was a junior fireman helping to raise a ladder.
“A few weeks later,” Bob writes, “I asked him about becoming a member, and soon after joined the Juniors in April of 1986.
“At 20 years old,” Bob says now, “I became a senior member, served as a senior member for 25 years, and eventually served as chief for 10.”
As he moved up the ranks, Bob took on more and more responsibility.
“Once you get up to chief,” he says, “you’re basically the liaison to Town Hall and the person that does any public interaction. You’re the last person that anybody sees as you’re leaving a call, as you give an update to the homeowners as to what you did, what happened there.
“You are in charge of all the men. You’re ultimately in charge of what happens at a scene while you’re there. And it just, you know, it’s a big responsibility.”
Bob says that the depiction of fires and firefighters in movies and TV shows is overly dramatic—”every time a car hits something,” he says, “the car explodes”—but he says the work can be “very intense.”
One of his most intense experiences occurred in 2004 when an airplane crashed into the roof of a house on Lovers Lane.
“We had to cut the people out of the aircraft,” he says, “and unfortunately, they didn’t make it.”
Bob retired as chief in 2011. He’s now an exempt member of the department, which means he still participates in training and fire response.
“It was a long time,” he says, “and, you know, very worthwhile, and it felt good to do something for the town. It was always exciting. Every day was something different.”
Bob now has more time for his hobby, photography.
“I’m a big aviation photographer,” he says, adding, with a laugh, that he attends “every air show that comes up on the East Coast.”
At one show, Bob rode in a World War II-era B-17 bomber.
“It’s 450 bucks to go for a flight,” he says, “but it’s worth every penny once you get on there. You realize what the guys went through.”
As for future historical projects, Bob says, “I want to do something more on an aviation theme. There were some other aviation stories that I found going through our different newspaper articles here.”
He would also like to update and revise his book on the Madison Hose Company.
“I have an addendum, three-quarters written up,” he says, “that covers the Fire Department history from 2007 to the current time, also including a bunch of other information that I found after I put this together, because we were under a deadline for the anniversary.”
And as for getting back into town administration in an elective role, Bob says, “I’ve thought about it, but I just back out. A couple of people have tried to get me to run for selectman.
“I just put in my hours and years at the Fire Department, and I feel that I’ve sort of done my part there. As much as I would love to be part of doing something with the town and at maybe the political level, I also realize it takes a lot of time and there’s a lot of meetings to attend.”
Nor does Bob see himself returning as an officer in the Fire Department, although he seems a bit young to have retired from anything, much less fire chief.
Bob says, “Charlie Herrschaft, who was the fire chief in Guilford when I joined the department here in Madison at age 16 and is still chief now, was sort of ribbing me because I retired a little too early, probably.”
He pauses, then adds, smiling, “But you do enough town meetings…”
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