WILLISTON - Given his family history, it would have been odd for Chad Hartman not to be a firefighter.

“It's hard to explain why, except it's about saving lives. Dad does it. My grandfather does it,” the 2001 Genoa Area High School graduate says. “I guess it's in my blood.”

Today, as Mr. Hartman's grandfather, Lowell, celebrates his 45th year on the Allen Township Volunteer Fire Department, three generations of Hartmans - Lowell,66; his son, Dennis, 42; and grandson, Chad, 19 - are active members of this tiny red brick firehouse along State Rt. 579.

It's a rarity, even in an industry in which adrenaline-racing heroics are carried in bloodlines.

“Saving lives is something that's motivating, almost catching, so a lot of times you'll see a father and son or a couple of brothers together on a department,” says Oregon Fire Chief Ray Walendzak, secretary of the Northwestern Ohio Volunteer Firefighters Association.

“But for the grandfather to still be active and his grandson to be old enough to be on the department, too? That's unusual.”

The Hartmans' contribution doesn't end there.

Dennis, now the battalion chief of the Allen Clay Joint Fire District, replaced his father as the Allen Township station's chief in 1981. Lowell, who had been chief since 1971, replaced his cousin, Melvin Hartman, who served from 1961 to 1971.

In fact, it was Melvin who originally piqued young Lowell's interest in the job, and Lowell signed up for the job as soon as he was eligible.

In an age when the firefighters were called out only a few dozen times a year, nearly two weeks went by before the now-familiar fire station tone alerted Lowell to his first call.

It was Feb. 13, 1957, and he was 21, newly married, and “ready for excitement - It's typical of the young guys,” he chuckles, almost apologetically.

That day was his first “run,” a possible heart attack victim in the house across the street from the firehouse. As emergency crews rushed in, they could see the elderly farmer had died in his bed. His grown children already had gathered. Nearby, his widow wept quietly.

The dead man was Lowell's grandfather.

“It was hard. But when you're with a volunteer department like this, it's going to happen,” Lowell says. “You're going to run into relatives and people you know.”

First by telephone and more recently by pager, Mr. Hartman, a construction supervisor by trade, would spend the next nearly half-century racing to countless fires, tractor-trailer spills, and medical emergencies.

He'd respond in the dead of night, on a Thanksgiving Day (Mr. Hartman's knife in hand and poised to curve the family turkey) and during Sunday church service.

“In a small town like this, a fire comes in and you'll still see a bunch of men jump up in the middle of church,” says wife, Diane. “Lowell was always one of them. He'd just throw me the offering envelope and run.”

He has rushed to State Rt. 2 to pull Lake Erie anglers from a painful crush of tailpipes, seatbelts, and fishing hooks and he has seen Cedar Point visitors' days end in tragedy.

He has carried children from burning bedrooms and untangled farmers from combines.

On one hot summer day, he pulled three charred bodies - a mother and her two young children - from their burned minivan as a coroner's van waited nearby. The dead were unrecognizable until a sheriff's deputy ran a search on the van's license plate.

The bodies, Mr. Hartman learned, were family friends.

“It's the children and the infants that get you,” he says. “And something even vaguely similar will happen later and you get this awful flashback.”

His son agrees. He has seen firefighters cry. He has been one of them.

Just a few runs into his firefighting career, he responded to a chest-pain call. Dennis Hartman helped load the elderly woman into the waiting squad and climbed in after her.

“She was doing OK, but we got caught by the train,” he recalls. “She looked up at me and said, `I don't feel too good.'”

Dennis' grandmother suffered a heart attack and was dead by the time they reached St. Charles.

“I held it together, doing my job,” Dennis Hartman says, relaxing in the red brick station that these days seems too small to be the headquarters of a 38-member department that handled 288 runs last year. “But then when we transferred care [to the emergency room doctors] and, well, I won't say I collapsed, but it was ... it was really hard.”

Still, the physical demands, the in-your-face danger, and the emotional drain of the job fails to discourage Chad Hartman from the medical training and firefighting classes he now takes. Within months, he should be lugging around the same 60 pounds of turnout gear and breathing apparatus beside his father and grandfather.

He wants to eventually “go professional,” he says.

“I guess I realize that one day I'm going to die,” he adds. “That would be the ultimate: giving your life to save others.”

Dennis Hartman says he understands, though he predicts he'll have a “pit in my stomach” when he watches his oldest son reach into a burning vehicle or rush into a smoke-filled building.

“These things need to be done,” he says. “It's never easy, but we all find a way to deal with it.”

First Published February 1, 2002, 11:45 a.m.