North Carolina Firemen Meet
The North Carolina State Firemen’s Association held its fifty-seventh annual convention at the Hotel Charlotte in Charlotte. N. C., on September 13-14.
Reports showing that city fire departments during the last year have maintained peacetime efficiency in spite of such exacting wartime handicaps as sharply reduced manpower and imperilmcnt of prescribed standards of automotive stringency were submitted.
The 400 delegates at the opening session heard addresses by R. Gregg Cherry of Gastonia. Democratic nominee for Governor, who dealt analytically with a number of problems related to the war and the period immediately to follow the conflict; by Mayor Herbert H. Baxter and former Mayor Ben E. Douglas of Charlotte; Clarence O. Kuester, manager of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce; Charlotte Eire Chief W. Hendrix Palmer, who is past president of the state association and the International Association of Fire Chiefs; and Chief R. A. Joyner of Farmville. Chief Charles L. Burkett of Salisbury presided.
State Fire Marshal Sherwood Brockwell, of Raleigh, presented a report on State fire school conducted last May at Palmer Drill tower, Charlotte.
Frank W. Bennett, chief of the Durham Fire Department, was elected president; J. C. Fitzgerald fire chief for Asheville, was chosen vice-president; John L. Miller, Concord fire chief, was elected secretary; Ed Johnson, assistant chief of the Kannapolis Fire Department, was made treasurer, and Albert W. Brinson, fireman from New Bern, was made statistician.
At a date as yet undecided, the executive committee will meet to determine the site of next year’s convention.
