Man killed in 1982 would be honored at firehouse
By Mark Ferenchik
The Columbus Dispatch
Copyright 2007 The Columbus Dispatch
All Rights Reserved
COLUMBUS, Ohio. — It happened almost a quarter-century ago: An arsonist’s fire swept through a vacant Franklinton warehouse and took the life of a 21-year-old firefighter.
Maurice Gates worked from Fire Station No. 10 on W. Broad Street in Franklinton, but he also was of Franklinton.
He spent part of his childhood on N. Yale Avenue.
It’s where his mother, Callie Scales, still lives, less than a half-mile from where he died.
Now, Columbus firefighters and Franklinton residents want to give Gates a tribute at the fire station the city is building in his old neighborhood.
They’re raising money for a memorial at the new No. 10 station on W. Broad Street, which is to open in 2008.
“They never forgot him,” his mother said this week.
“It means a lot.”
Carol Stewart, president of the Franklinton Historical Society, is one of those leading the drive for a Gates memorial after talking about it with firefighters. The group plans to discuss the memorial at its meeting at 6:30 tonight at the Columbus Metropolitan Library branch at 1061 W. Town St.
It wouldn’t be the first memorial for Gates. The gym at the fire training academy is named for him. And Stewart’s family and neighbors already had created a memorial for him in Franklinton. In 2001, they planted flowers at West Park Avenue and W. State Street.
They also put a sign honoring Gates over the modest flower bed, but someone stole it about a year ago, Stewart said.
“It’s not in very good shape now,” said Franklinton resident Bruce Warner, who helped plant it.
Firefighters also have maintained the flower bed and cut the grass.
They thought it appropriate to honor Gates with something more befitting his sacrifice.
“It brings that memorial to a safe location where we can take care of it, keep an eye on it,” said fire Capt. Chuck Penwell, who works from the Franklinton station. The new station will be built next to the 1896 station at 1096 W. Broad St.
Stewart estimated that it will take about $10,000 in donations for the new memorial, which could include a plaque, a monument, concrete pavers, a landscaped area with trees and flowers, and Gates’ name in brass set in a brick wall. Stewart said the society also is considering applying for a grant.
Gates died of smoke inhalation and burns while fighting a warehouse fire on S. Glenwood Avenue between Town and State streets on Sept. 15, 1982.
The arsonist was never caught.
Scales remembered the last time she saw her son. Two days before he died, he came by her house to pick up two jars of apple jelly she had made.
It was nice that her son worked so close to her house. “A lot of mornings, when he would get off, he’d eat breakfast with me,” she said.
When he was a child, he wanted to become either a firefighter or a pilot. After winning a scholarship to a college-prep high school in Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y., he returned home, attended Ohio Wesleyan University, and studied business administration and art at Bliss College while working in the Doctors Hospital North pharmacy.
He then heard about a Fire Division opening.
Scales didn’t want her son to become a firefighter. It was too dangerous.
“He said, ‘Mom, that’s what I want to do,’ ” Scales said.
“I left it alone.”
He became a firefighter in March 1981 and was assigned to the No. 10 station in July 1982.
On the day Gates died, Scales was working in housekeeping at Doctors Hospital North when a co-worker found her downstairs and told her the fire chief and a chaplain were there and wanted to see her.
“I knew something happened,” she said, crying.
“I was just praying that he wasn’t dead. I said, ‘Lord, don’t let nothing bad happen to him.’ ”
She dabbed her eyes.
“I didn’t want to go up to the office and hear the news. I didn’t want to get off the elevator.
“I knew it.”
She had told her son: If you’re involved in a big fire, don’t be a hero.
“He said, ‘Mom, we took an oath to protect property and save people’s lives,’ ” she said.
At the time, fire investigators believed that Gates had left the building to replace an exhausted air tank and re-entered the building not knowing his comrades had been ordered to leave.
Was he a hero?
“He was that day,” his mother said.
“But he wouldn’t want nobody to say he was a hero.”
Those in Franklinton would disagree with him.