by Joel Addington
Contributing Writer
When firefighter Linda Treadwell rang the bell on the 1920s fire engine, a loud ding made everyone perk up, especially 8-year-old Cameron Blanchard.
“Oww, that freaked me out,” she said.
The third grader from St. Mark’s Episcopal Day School was scribbling away in a notebook when the sound echoed through the historic Catherine Street Fire Station at Metropolitan Park.
The station now serves as the Jacksonville Fire Museum, which was the last stop on a tour of historic Jacksonville sites led by St. Mark’s third-grade teacher Drew Haramis last Wednesday.
Haramis has worked to keep Jacksonville history alive in the minds of youth by giving the tours about seven times a year for the last 15 years, usually to students of private schools in the area.
She said local history has been a huge part of her life thanks to her father.
“He was forever pointing things out to me,” she said. “When I started teaching the third grade – which is when we (the school district) teach Jacksonville history – I realized I knew everything.”
Growing up, she heard about the skirmishes between the French and the Spanish during colonization, the history behind the Ribault Monument at Fort Caroline and stories about the folks buried at local cemeteries.
“I’ve always been a big history buff,” said Haramis. “It’s fascinating.”
The tour started in Riverside where children saw historic homes and the cemetery where one of the city’s founders, Isaiah D. Hart, is buried alongside his family.
“Many of the things we’ve studied, the kids are able to see,” said Haramis. “Jacksonville has a touchable, phenomenal history from the Timucuan Indians to today with consolidated government.”
Then students came through Downtown and finished up at City Hall.
“We focus a lot on names of the streets and where they come from,” said Haramis. “Jacksonville’s first 20 streets were named for important people in history and in Jacksonville.”
But by far the most popular part of the tour is the fire museum.
“They can’t get enough of it,” said Haramis. “They tell me they’re going to bring back mom and dad.”
The facility features historic fire-fighting equipment like a hand-operated water pump from 1806, old fire boxes that served as the rudimentary dispatch system alerting firefighters to fires, and the large net used to catch people after they jumped from upper floors of burning buildings.
But Haramis, a Jacksonville native, may have been just as excited as the children.
“Look, it’s driven like a bike chain,” she said, pointing to the large chain and gears under the 1920s fire engine. “I love this stuff.”
About 1,200 students come through the Catherine Street Fire Station each month, said Treadwell, the Jacksonville firefighter and medic explaining each of the museum’s exhibits.
She told the children why, even in the Florida heat, firefighters have always worn wool uniforms.
“It’s because wool burns instead of melting,” said Treadwell, as students viewed a mannequin dressed head-to-toe in wool. “In a fire, it gets hot enough to melt off his pants onto his legs,” she said.
Then there was what looked like a trampoline hanging on the wall. Treadwell explained it was more like a net than a trampoline.
“They’d tell them to sit their butt right there,” she said, pointing to the red dot in the center of the canvas net. “If they landed with their feet, the impact could break their legs.”
Haramis is not the only person showing off the city’s rich history though.
The Jacksonville Historical Society provides tours free of charge, said director Emily Lisska.
She added that historic touring businesses in Jacksonville, such as the newly established Tour Jax company, are growing, and that’s something she welcomes.
“It’s very exciting for me to see this,” said Lisska. “It’s not unlike St. Augustine. Tourism is turning into a viable business for people. It can be a career path and at the same time a labor of love and passion. I feel like history has arrived in Jacksonville when business can be made out of history.”
But promoting history and preserving it are two different things.
“Preserving it has been mixed,” said Lisska. “There are a lot of people trying hard. The (Mayor John) Peyton administration has been very supportive as well as Glorious Johnson and other Council members. We have an active and viable Historical Preservation Commission that’s vital to our city. But we have a history of demolishing historical structures.”
However, the Catherine Street Fire Station in Metro Park is one structure that’s been saved, and it continues to be a source of education and wonderment.
“It’s cool to see things from the 1800s,” said Frannie Wetherbee, an 8-year-old from St. Mark’s.
She took pictures and made notes while at the fire museum for her journal.
Camp Shelor, also 8, was amazed by the hand-drawn fire extinguisher.
“I liked how it ran on soda as its fuel,” he said.