Fifty of Bill Stratz’s 80 years have been with the Red Bank Fire Department. (Photo by Dustin Racioppi; click to enlarge)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
It’s an unlikely warm Saturday afternoon in Red Bank and Bill Stratz is waiting for his four-year-old great-grandson to barrel through the front door of his McLaren Street home at any time. Stratz is on babysitting duty for a few hours, after which he’ll try to do some cleaning in the basement.
There isn’t much for Stratz to do these days on account of a bum knee that’s kept him in physical therapy the last few weeks, and will continue a few more. He’s not happy about this. It gets between him and a passion he’s had for a half-century: chasing fires in Red Bank.
At 80, Stratz, who for the last 18 years or so has stayed active with Relief Engine Company as a member of the fire police, is still eager to answer the call of duty in Red Bank — a call that seemed unavoidable when he moved to town in 1961.
It was then, when he was living in another house on McLaren and teaching radio repair classes at Fort Monmouth, that his neighbors recruited him to join the volunteer fire department’s ranks. They pointed to the fire hydrant in front of his home and used it as a selling point. One of the neighbors was John Hand, who served on Independent Engine Company, and the other was Ducky Moore, who was part of Navesink Hook and Ladder Company.
“I went for a physical and filled out the application,” he said. “Everybody around thought they would get me, and I ended up with Relief.”
He was 31 with three kids and his late wife, Lucille, who quickly became a sort of auxiliary member of the department, listening for the whistle blasts when there was a call and relaying the numbers to Stratz so he knew where to go. This was before there were scanners and radios.
“The horn would start timing out the numbers. Then you had to count out the numbers and figure out the area you’d have to go,” he said, giving 2-2-2 as an example. That’s the corner of Broad and Front Street. “In the middle of the night she’d starting counting them out, and she’d yell them to me. I did well with the number of calls I went on. My wife would’ve told you that.”
These are fresh memories for Stratz, who has a hard time recalling when radios were introduced to the department or, when prodded, a truly memorable fire call.
But there was one that eventually came to him, when his daughter, Karen, brought up a Mother’s Day explosion at a drug store downtown that threw Moore under a truck and caused him serious injury. Stratz’s eyes widen as if to say, Oh, yeah, that fire.
Fifty years doing anything and you’re bound to grow accustomed to it, Stratz said. At any point he could have walked away and pursued his goal to spend more time traveling, but, he said, “I had no reason to actually leave the department.”
And the department can’t seem to actually leave him.
Stratz, who moved into his current home on McLaren not long after he joined the department, looks out his window every day and, as he did for years at his old home, sees a fire hydrant.
“I’ve had a fire hydrant in front of my house ever since I was in Red Bank,” he said. “I tried to have it moved. I can’t park in front of my house.”
Just as he did when he first moved to town, Stratz has been surrounded by fellow firefighters, too. His next door neighbor is on the department, as is another one a few doors down, he said. And up the street there’s Stanley Sickels, Red Bank’s administrator and fire marshal.
“I’ve known Stanley since he was a little kid. Excellent firefighter,” Stratz said. “His father made him a little fire truck and he’d go up and down the street like he was in the fire company. He was destined.”
Just like Stratz was. And, he said, he’s destined to be back out on calls again, soon as that knee heals.
Before that, on April 7, the department will honor Stratz for his 50 years of service to the borough with an event at the Relief firehouse on Drummond Place. And in the meantime, he’ll try and keep busy with the more mundane tasks in life.
“Of course I’ve got to wash dishes. I babysit. I don’t cut the grass anymore. I don’t shovel snow, although I’d like to,” he said. “But I’m still with it. I’ll be back out there.”
