Since the day he retired in 1993, Ray Elder has spent his days sitting in an old office chair in the basement of his Northland home.
The 88-year-old sifts through the pages of the Kansas City Fire Department’s collection of large, red, leatherbound log books. Each entry is a record of the emergencies to which firefighters responded, and the accidents that happened as they battled blazes.
“I don’t have any holidays,” Elder says. “If they exist, I don’t know about them. I got started on this and I haven’t stopped.”
Elder began documenting the history of the fire department when he retired after 35 years of service —16 years as a captain. His 23 books on the department’s history start with the first volunteer bucket brigades in 1858.
He’s also been on a mission to update and register the deaths of firefighters who died in the line of duty. His goal is to make sure every single person who perished in the department's 157-year history is honored on the city’s stately memorial to fallen firefighters.
“Every man on the fire department is in this book,” Elder says as he turns page after page of handwritten reports in the tome on his desk. “What he did, where he was at, his rank, his address, if he got hurt, if he'd done something good, if he done something bad.”
“All of them done something bad,” he adds with a laugh. “They loved their booze.”
A man on a mission
Spending any amount of time with Elder is a rapid-fire lesson in Kansas City Fire Department history. Today, he’s looking up an entry for Capt. William H. Craig, the department’s first recorded death, on March 7, 1887.
“He was 37 years old,” Elder says. “He had three children. His station address was 1312 Union Avenue. He was on hose reel No. 1.”
The accident happened in mid-November 1886, in the West Bottoms. According to the Kansas City Journal, the blaze started in the basement of a five-story building at the corner of 10th and Mulberry streets. While fighting the fire, the captain stepped into an open elevator shaft and fell three floors. But because Craig died months after the fire, his name didn’t make it onto the official list of deaths in the line of duty.
That is, until Elder found the notation deep in the records.
“I'm still finding them,” Elder says. “I've got three men right here on paper, right now. I found 12 from the get go, and dug them out and put them in this book.”
Keeping the history alive
Elder is the official historian for the Kansas City Fire Historical Society, which means he’s the department’s repository of information and facts.
“I get up in the morning, I have my coffee, and I read my paper,” Elder says. “Into the basement I go. I'm down there every day.”
Elder also records how the fallen firefighters died over the decades. Some were kicked by horses, or they fell off ladders. Firefighters were crushed in collapsed buildings. They were run over by fire engines and killed in explosions.
Elder looks into each story, including where they died and where they are buried.
Kansas City Fire Historical Society President Paul Ferguson often stops by to check in on Elder.
“Ray's kind of made this process up,” Ferguson says of Elder's subterranean task. “It was not a process that exists for the city.”
Public recognition of their service
Once Elder discovers a forgotten firefighter, he notifies the fire department, which then has the newly-revealed name laser-cut into the tall metal panels at the Firefighters Fountain and Memorial, on 31st Street at the south end of Penn Valley Park.
The centerpiece of the memorial is a pair of bronze firefighters — one kneels and aims a hose, while a companion points in the distance. During summer months, 48 streams of water shoot up from the fountain’s 80-foot-wide basin in a circle around the statues.
“Ray's finding these guys that have died in the line of duty that we missed,” Ferguson says, “so not only do we have new people dying, unfortunately, but he's finding more people still.”
“Now, there's enough room to keep on adding names,” he says.
On a recent Saturday, the streets around the site were quiet and the memorial was covered in snow. There are 119 firefighter’s names currently cut into the aluminum panels behind the fountain. Elder is responsible for about a dozen of them.
“There's not going to be another Ray Elder, because he's irreplaceable,” Ferguson says. “Nobody could ever work as hard as he's worked on this history.”
