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DENTON – For 64 years, John Webster of Denton served his community as a volunteer firefighter.
While he no longer goes out on calls, Webster, 86, stays active with Denton Volunteer Fire Company as a trustee. He expects he’ll be driving a fire truck in August during Summerfest to give kids and the young at heart a thrilling ride through town.
While May 4 is National Firefighters Appreciation Day, appreciating “Mr. Webby,” as he is affectionately known, isn’t limited to one day a year. A DVFC Facebook post in August 2024 declared, “Mr. Webby leads by example and is an incredible mentor to all our members.”
DVFC members recognized Webster’s many years of service on two milestone anniversaries.
For his 50th anniversary as a firefighter, they gave him a commemorative white chief’s helmet emblazoned with a large gold shield honoring his service.
For his 60th anniversary with the company, officers and members presented him with a hose nozzle mounted as a trophy “to commemorate a momentous accomplishment that many will attempt, but few will achieve.”
“So, I don't know what it'll be at 70, if I hang around,” Webster said, laughing.
In his large, comfortable American foursquare home on 5th Avenue, Webster still listens daily to the emergency scanner with his orange tabby cat Tommy purring by his side. An antique hoosier houses his firefighting memorabilia, and Cat’s Meow collectibles perch on all the door headers. A wood stove in the living room that’s heated his home for 50 years is fueled by the logs two of his three sons supply and stack for him. Antique cast iron fire marks dot the brick wall behind the stove.
Rural Maryland roots
Webster was born on a small farm that bordered a train track and trestle in the rolling hills of rural Harford County, where his family has deep roots. He married his high school sweetheart Carol Hanna on April 9, 1960, and they soon moved to Caroline County after he accepted a teaching job at North Caroline High School. He and Carol called Denton home and raised three sons, Mark, Mike and Marty. The couple enjoyed 57 years of marriage until Carol passed away in 2017.
While Webster taught vocational agricultural and some mechanical subjects, Carol earned her degrees and taught elementary and middle school math for 33 years. A college friend asked him for help with his swimming pool business in the mid-1960s, so Webster worked for him part-time. He resigned from teaching after nine years, became a partner in the business, and finally sold it to a large company in Easton, making a profit.
Soon after he began teaching, Webster met Ted Manlove of the now-defunct Manlove Automotive where he bought supplies for school. Manlove was chief of the fire company and recruited Webster in 1961, but not before Webster would go out to a fire “and observe what they were doing,” he said. “Finally, (Manlove) said, ‘Why don't you just join?’ So I joined.”
Webster remembers when the old Silco Cut Price Store on Market Street burned down. “That was a tough day for me, because I had to go to work,” he said. “I had to drive by that big fire they had. But anyway, I went to plenty of big fires, believe me.”
Musical interludes
Balancing the intensity of firefighting was Webster’s love of performing music.
Music has always been a big part of Webster’s life. In North Harford High School, he played tenor saxophone and marched with the band. He also was very active in FFA, raising pigs and beef cattle for FFA and his 4-H Club projects.
It was in FFA that Webster honed skills in leadership and music that would serve him well in the future. He was the president of the state chapter of the FFA during his senior year in high school and his first semester at the University of Maryland.
He was accepted as a member of the National FFA Band and marched in the American Royal Parade in Kansas City, Missouri. During three years living in the agricultural fraternity house, he joined up with like-minded frat brothers and sang “not as good as we thought we were, but we had fun,” he said.
Webster learned to sing harmony from a young age at Emory United Methodist Church, where his mother was the choir director, and for many years he sang in the choir at St. Luke’s Methodist Church.
Dale Palmer from St. Luke’s sang in a barbershop group in Seaford, Delaware, 40 years ago and invited Webster to check out a practice. “I finally did go with him, and it hit with me, and I've been singing barbershop ever since,” he said. “I do enjoy it very much.”
Today, he’s a barbershop lead in quartets and choruses, meeting weekly in Milford for practices with the chorus, which performs occasionally in local venues.
These days, Webster practices his music at home and keeps up with his sons, daughters-in-law and four granddaughters who are all grown. All of them are college graduates or are attending college.
Serving the Caroline community
As Webster reflected on the role of a volunteer firefighter, he said, “It’s very rewarding” despite the stress and challenges of possible exposure to chemicals, seeing tragic outcomes and even possibly having to exit family celebrations suddenly to respond to a call.
Besides the camaraderie and training, he said, “You gotta have dedication. I mean, you can't just roll over (in bed) and say, ‘I'll catch the next one.’ You just can't do it.”
Webster said today’s volunteer is sometimes a full-time professional firefighter elsewhere, bringing a high level of expertise. However, all volunteers are trained well.
“We have a very dedicated group of officers of the fire department who are cognizant of safety and expect the members who have been trained to do the job when they get on the scene,” Webster said. “We have a cadet program where young boys and girls get well-trained by a senior member of the fire department, and then they have training sponsored by the state of Maryland.”
Webster marveled at how the apparatus and equipment have evolved in the past half-century.
“The equipment – particularly safety equipment – has gotten better and better over the years,” Webster said. “Just in my 60 years, the equipment is so much different. I mean, the breathing apparatus that was part of our responding equipment back when I started was really inferior compared to what the members use today, but every member knows how to use it, when to use it, and how to take care of it. It's important.”
“The rolling equipment, the engines, are so much more sophisticated, so much better, of course, and it is something that each member is expected, when the call is finished, to be sure that piece of equipment is ready to go out the very next time it's needed, and everybody does that,” Webster said.
Webster’s dedication to service is deeply ingrained. His own moral compass and his conviction that the community deserves committed volunteer firefighters continue to guide him.
“I think you've got to have a sense of being obligated to everybody you come in contact with,” Webster said. “If there was an accident right here in front of my house, I would, of course, even now, try to find out if there was something I could do – if it was just to keep people away, or whatever it would be – that I was capable and trained to do. You've got to always know that you have the training to do the job you're asked to do.
