Sunbury Eagles donate $4K to BST&G firemen

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Mem­bers of the Fra­ter­nal Order of Eagles, Aerie 3614, a.k.a. the Sun­bury Eagles, are always ready to lend a help­ing hand; and when the Eagles found out that BST&G Fire Dis­trict fire­fight­ers needed some com­mer­cial grade exer­cise train­ing equip­ment at the sta­tion they decided to donate $4,000 to pay the tab.

BST&G Chief Jeff Wil­son said the depart­ment is pur­chas­ing a tread­mill and a stair mas­ter, both units heavy-duty com­mer­cial grade, from Barry’s Barbells.

“Fire­fight­ers Tim Bun­yard and Kyle Stelzer took this on as a project and came to me and sold the idea, then they put the pro­posal together,” Wil­son said. “We’ve had tread­mills donated to us before, but they had been used when we got them and they were not com­mer­cial rated, so they never held up to the heavy use fire­fight­ers gave them. We’re get­ting a good price on these units because Barry’s Bar­bells gives Fire Depart­ment and EMS discounts.”

Wil­son said because the Sun­bury Eagles have been great sup­port­ers of any need in the com­mu­nity, BST&G is able to bring the much needed exer­cise and train­ing equip­ment on board with­out going into the department’s budget.

Eagles Past Wor­thy Pres­i­dent Gary Tucker said the dona­tion to BST&G is just another exam­ple of what the Sun­bury Eagles Club is all about.

“We’re peo­ple help­ing peo­ple,” Tucker said. “The fire depart­ment came to us and asked us to help buy phys­i­cal train­ing equip­ment for the fire­fight­ers, it was needed, and we’re always ready to do our part for the local community.”

Tucker said because of an Aerie 3614 member’s recent non-fatal heart attack the Eagles bought a portable defib­ril­la­tor and are part­ner­ing with BST&G to hold CPR classes at the Eagles Sun­bury facility.

”All of our staff will be fully trained to use the defib­ril­la­tor,” Tucker said. “And when we get CPR classes set up and run­ning we want to open them up to the community.”

Wil­son said BST&G is look­ing for­ward to devel­op­ing addi­tional com­mu­nity out­reach projects.

“We have a cer­ti­fied CPR instruc­tor on staff, and we have the CPR train­ing man­nequins,” Wil­son said. “It’s a great part­ner­ship we have with the Sun­bury Eagles. We also want to work with them pro­vid­ing other ser­vices to the community.”

In addi­tion to help­ing local fire depart­ments, dur­ing recent years the Sun­bury Eagles have donated money to the Ohio Fallen Heroes Memo­r­ial Fund, the Amer­i­can Can­cer Soci­ety, the Big Wal­nut Edu­ca­tion Foun­da­tion, Com­mu­nity Library and the Sun­bury Police Department.

Also ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the Eagles’ gen­eros­ity have been the Big Wal­nut High School Girl’s Soc­cer Boost­ers, the Big Wal­nut High School Girls Bas­ket­ball Boost­ers, the Big Wal­nut High School Wrestling Boost­ers, the Big Wal­nut High School Cheer­lead­ing Boost­ers, the Big Wal­nut High School March­ing Band Boost­ers and the Big Walnut/DACC FFA, to name just a few.

His­tor­i­cally, Sun­bury has had a fire depart­ment dat­ing back to the 1800’s. Galena had its own fire depart­ment until 1972. All that adja­cent town­ships could do in a fire emer­gency was depend on their neigh­bors for help. In 1952, the Berk­shire, Sun­bury, Tren­ton Fire Dis­trict was formed. When the Vil­lage of Galena Fire Depart­ment dis­solved, Galena came on board.

The BST&G Fire Dis­trict oper­ates out of a facil­ity located at 350 West Cherry Street, Sun­bury. The build­ing con­tains a garage, day room, equip­ment stor­age areas and office space. The depart­ment dis­patches through Delaware County 911. The BST&G Fire Department’s non-emergency num­ber is 740–965-3841.

BST&G is located on the World Wide Web at < bstgfiredistrict.org >.

Posted by Gary Henery on Feb 27 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.