LEWISBURG - Coming soon to a video screen near you: An original documentary, "One Man, One Museum, One Community, Shamokin's Fire History."
Produced by undergraduates at Bucknell University, it is the story of the City of Shamokin's fire department, the Rescue Fire Museum and John F. Smith. Smith, long-time dispatcher for the city's police and fire departments who died Aug. 14, 2014, at the age of 83, was the guiding force behind the creation of the museum and the community's recognized authority on local fire department history.
The 15-minute video, which was completed at the end of April as a semester project, is the collaborative effort of the seven students who were enrolled in a video ethnography class taught by Carl Milofsky, a sociology professor. Students, all from diverse backgrounds and academic interests, planned the video in the beginning weeks of the spring semester, then spent six weeks preparing for, arranging and conducting interviews in Shamokin with Mayor William Milbrand and four
members of the Rescue Fire Company, viewing and editing video copy and, finally, condensing hours of footage into the final cinematic product.
Down to the wire
The video was a work in progress up to the convening of the students' last scheduled class of the semester on April 28. With minutes to spare, students made the final edits just in time to show their results to Milofsky and his colleague, Brianna Derr, an instructional technologist on the Bucknell staff who helped with the class.
Appearing on the video, in addition to Milbrand, were Bob Wolfe, Bill Smoogen, Lester Yohe and Corey Pilkus. The video was planned as a serious, but informal, way of studying the community, and the students viewed the project as a serious sociological study.
The interviews with the five Shamokin "subjects" captured the pride the firefighters have for the community and the fire department's heritage as well as the challenges they experience in maintaining the same level of services in a city with serious financial problems and a shrinking population.
"I doubt if we will ever get back to our heyday when anthracite was king," Milbrand said during his on-camera interview. "But I want Shamokin to always be a nice place to live, a nice place for people to bring up their families."
Star of the show
Firefighters described the early history of Shamokin's fire companies and the vital role the companies still play not only in public safety, but in supporting education and athletic opportunities for area youth, providing social opportunities and aiding community improvement projects. Acknowledging that consolidation of companies is bound to be the wave of the future, they spoke in some detail about the merger that has already taken place between the Rescue and Liberty companies.
The real "star" of the video is Smith, who appears briefly in archival footage. The mayor and firefighters praise him for turning what was once a former city-owned public rest room into a repository for Shamokin's fire history. No one knew more about that history than Smith who, over the years, collected information about fires as they occurred in real time and spent hours upon hours researching fires of the past. Smith, more than anyone else, preserved this important part of Shamokin's heritage, and firefighters lamented that much of Shamokin's ongoing history is now in danger of being "lost" because he is no longer around to preserve it.
The city fire museum moved into its quarters at Liberty and Lincoln streets in the fall of 1997, but for nearly two decades prior to that, Smith's collection of local fire memorabilia was housed in the Rescue Fire Company garage.
Global perspective
The students - four senior men and three sophomore women - working on the project all come from places far different than Shamokin. They were: Colin Sygrove, of New York City, an economics and political science major; Clayton McManus, of Baltimore, an economics major; Connor Hayes, of New Jersey, an economics and geography major; Abu Chowdhury, of Bangladesh, who majored in economics and minored in sociology; Michelle Lutz, of the San Francisco area, a marketing innovation and design major; Laura Lujan, of Los Angeles, majoring in English and sociology, and Stephanie Salazar, a sociology major from Houston. Only two of the students - McManus and Hayes - were previously familiar with Shamokin because they had visited the city with their friend and Bucknell classmate, Brandon Pesarchick.
Milofsky explained that the course asked students to use their personal observations of the community and informal interviews and conversations to tell a sociological study. Milofsky learned about the existence of the fire museum through Steve Bartos, of Mount Carmel, with whom we worked on other community projects. Bartos also formerly served as the city's chief clerk.
Milofsky was impressed with the rich visual opportunities that the museum provides for telling part of Shamokin's history, but it was the seven students themselves who unanimously agreed to use Shamokin as the video topic.
Sygrove said initially the class was considering the selection of a project closer to home - an entrepreneur class at Bucknell. "When we heard about the fire history museum, we thought it was more important," he explained. "We all decided we wanted to do the video on the museum because the entrepreneur study would have turned into more of a documentary than sociological research."
Milofsky, who is greatly impressed with the museum, hopes he and others from Bucknell can eventually help the city in organizing and cataloguing materials there. "In the short term, for this semester, my students decided the starting point was to tell the story of John Smith, present the museum visually as it exists today and interview volunteers about what the museum means to them and why they are part of volunteer companies," he said.
To be shown in city
Milofsky was greatly impressed with the students' finished product. Students did it all themselves except from advice from himself and Derr, and the April 28 "screening" was the first time he saw the tangible results of their efforts.
Milofsky said he was pleased with how well the students worked together. In talking about the project, students expressed admiration for Milbrand and the firefighters they met and said they were grateful for the opportunity to learn about Shamokin.
"It's great to get out into a community and talk to people," Luhan said. "You get a sense of history, and you come to understand how this history impacts our present. The favorite part of the class for me for talking to people in Shamokin and learning about the community. Doing a video makes you look around and better understand the place you happen to be in."
When told that the video was completed, Milbrand's reaction was, "I can't wait to see it." He shouldn't have to wait too long. Milofsky hopes to show it in Shamokin in the near future, and it will eventually be posted on Bucknell's website. He said he was happy to participate in a project that focused on Shamokin, adding that it was a pleasure to meet and work with "such great kids."
Bucknell's involvement in the coal region is not new. Milofsky said he himself has been working in the Shamokin area since the early 1990s, mostly by placing students in internships in places like Shamokin Area Community Hospital. Students and faculty from other disciplines have also done research, he said. Of particular note, anthropologist Janet MacGaffey and her students did considerable research and spent much time in Shamokin that resulted in publication of a book, "Coal Dust on Our Feet."
More to come
Milofksy is also among the Bucknell staff who have been involved in planning to establish a Bucknell field station at the newly dedicated Mother Maria Kaupas Center in Mount Carmel for faculty/student research projects and volunteerism opportunities. Bucknell students - although not the same ones - have been simultaneously working on a video about Kaupas.
Milofsky will teach the video ethnography class again next spring, and his goal is to have the latest batch of students return to the coal region for another video study. Students may use the Kaupas Center as a base for their operations, Centralia is a probable subject for the next effort, Milofsky said, but added that he is attempting to identify other topics.
He noted the Bucknell faculty, over many decades, have enjoyed meeting and working with Deppen Scholars who enrolled there from Mount Carmel as well as students who came other coal region communities, including many from Shamokin. "These students have brought us into the coal region, have explained things about the region and have brought us into their communities," Milofsky said.