By Brandon Bennett
WHITEWOOD— After 51 years, Dan Schmidt is hanging up his gear at the Whitewood Volunteer Fire Department.
The station held an open house so residents and well- wishers could congratulate him.
Why did he want to become a firefighter?
I was helping with the Elkhorn Ridge fire when I was still in school. And I thought ‘this is the way to go’ so I joined the fire department,” he said.
He’s held a variety of positions within the department, secretary/treasuer, Chief and Captain. In that time the number of personnel hasn’t changed a whole lot but the equipment has.
Schmidt recalls when he joined the department it had a 1939 pumper. Now it has a brand new state-of- the -art truck. (That’s for later).
Schmidt recalls helping with fired around the Black Hills like the Westberry Trails fire in 1988.
Schmidt is also retired from his day job so looks forward to camping and fishing.
Interestingly, Dan’s son Jarred is the current Fire Chief. So what’s it like commanding your father at an incident?
“It was always easy because we’ve always gotten along even with some stress on an incident but everyone knows they have a job to do,” he said.
Jarred joined the department in 2002 and Dan told him he’d stay on in his various roles so they could say they’d worked together.
“I tried to keep him around as long as I could,” said Jarred.
