By Linda Wilson Fuoco
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
MOON TOWNSHIP, Pa. — The life of Charles Belgie Jr. has been consumed by fire.
Since 1946, he has fought fires, raised funds to keep the Moon Township Volunteer Fire Company operating, trained others to fight fires, and worked to prevent fires.
Last week, he retired after 29 years as fire marshal and emergency management coordinator for Moon.
“It was time,” said Mr. Belgie, who is 84 years old.
But his involvement with firefighting did not begin with those paid positions, and it won’t end with his retirement, either.
“I’m a lifelong member of the Moon Township Volunteer Fire Company,” he noted with pride. “We have a lot of activities and functions,” he said, and he plans to stay involved with those.
His volunteer service included 44 years “in firefighting line officer positions.” In 1956, he was elected assistant fire chief, serving under his father, who was chief. He held that post until 1974 when he became chief, a position he filled until 2009.
This is Mr. Belgie’s second retirement. The first one was in 1985 when he retired from Bell Telephone Co. of Pennsylvania — and promptly signed on to the two Moon positions.
As for pursuing hobbies in his retirement, he said, “My No. 1 hobby has always been firefighting. No. 2 is woodworking. I think I have every tool Sears ever made,” he said, including a jig saw. His favorite wood to work with is knotty pine, and he mostly makes small items, including spice cabinets.
A lifelong resident of Moon, Mr. Belgie plans to stay put, except for “hanging out” on weekends at his cabin in Tionesta, Forest County. His wife of 60 years, Gloria, died last year. He has two sons and one grandson in Florida.
In 1946, he joined the Moon Township Volunteer Fire Company as a junior firefighter. He has been an active member ever since, except for a four-year hiatus, starting in 1948, when he served on a destroyer in the U.S. Navy.
His Navy service included a tour of duty in Korea, “where we were one of the few U.S. ships to be fired upon,” Mr. Belgie noted.
He has found his paid and unpaid posts to be interesting and challenging, which he wrote about in 2013 in a five-page “fire service biography.”
“I have been involved with all types of emergency situations requiring expertise in vehicle rescue, aircraft firefighting, commercial building fires, residential home fires and all kinds of hazardous materials. Most of the outcomes were happily shared with family members, as there was no loss of life or injuries.”
On other occasions, “we shared grief with family members. ... I have personally rescued children and adults ... I have also been involved with incidents where my efforts were not enough to save them and had to inform parents and survivors of the fatal outcome.”
That’s “the downside of being an emergency services resonder,” he said. “Nothing is harder to do than telling a parent that their child” or other family member did not survive a house fire, a vehicle crash or a boating accident.
Mr. Belgie is proud of a two-year effort he began in 2009 to acquire a piece of steel from the World Trade Center in New York City. The 898-pound, 6-foot-tall steel column was unveiled outside the municipal building on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Mr. Belgie chaired the committee that planned the memorial brick walkway that surrounds the steel.
He has received numerous honors during his career, including being named Allegheny County Volunteer Firemen’s Association Fire Fighter of the Year in 2001.
He is a past president of the Allegheny County Fire Chiefs Association and was chairman of the statewide advisory board of the Pennsylvania Fire and Emergency Services Institute from 2006-2010.
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