Courtesy of Jim Paxton
Paxton and Taylor
Every Saturday night in the mid ’70s, you could find Jim Paxton and Kenn Taylor glued to the television watching their heroes’ latest exploits in Emergency!
Inspired by their fathers and Johnny and Roy – the paramedic firefighting duo who starred in their favorite show – Taylor and Paxton dedicated their lives to serving their hometown.
The two are retiring in January after a combined 75 years served here – maybe even more depending on how you count it.
Humble beginnings
Paxton and Taylor’s fathers were volunteer firefighters in the 1960s and every time they had to drive off to the station, the boys speedily pedaled their bikes in the wake of their respective dad’s car.
“Our whole lives we were made up with this, right?” Paxton says. “(Taylor) would travel as a child with his own fire coat and helmet and the sweeper hose to mimic a fire hose. When we played Emergency! it wasn’t just pretend. As kids, we transformed parents’ cars into a response vehicle with cut-out cardboard red lights. … That was just a way of life for us.”
Paxton and Taylor as kids
Taylor says he has a paper that he wrote in fourth grade about how he wanted to be a fireman. Paxton aspired to be either a cowboy or fireman, but didn’t see many cowboys rolling through Pickerington, so he chose the latter.
Paxton is five years younger than Taylor and grew up watching him find ways to help out at the station, which was as encouraging as it was enviable.
In the ’70s, the fire department was comprised entirely of volunteers, and there was not a dedicated dispatcher to man the radio when everyone was on a run. This was when the boys got their first taste of the action.
“Both of us had the opportunity, probably by the time we were in junior high school, to cover the radio while the trucks were out because there was nobody else,” Paxton says. “I’m not sure having a seventh-grade dispatcher is optimal, but it was better than nothing.”
Taylor was a certified emergency medical technician (EMT) before graduating high school in 1980, which likely made him the youngest EMT in Ohio. He sometimes had to leave school to go on emergency runs – which Paxton says everyone thought was cool – and joined the fire department right out of high school.
Courtesy of Violet Township
Kenn Taylor and his father, Gary
At the time, the area’s population was growing beyond what the volunteer firefighters could handle, so they had to adapt. The department hired its five first full-time employees in 1986, and Taylor was chosen to lead the group.
“Early on in our lives, we both decided this was something we wanted to be a part of,” Paxton says. “So (Taylor) went on to become the first paid member of the fire department and the first full-time fire chief the department ever had at the whopping age of 22.”
He was the fire chief until 2009, when the department changed to a system with three battalion chiefs rotating every 24 hours.
“I demoted myself, I had been chief long enough and felt like the organization needed some change, so we created battalion chief positions and I took one of them,” Taylor says. “I was (Paxton’s) boss, then he became my boss. He promoted up to the assistant chief level.”
Paxton started as a volunteer in 1987, earned a full-time firefighter paramedic position in 1989 and was made a lieutenant/company officer in 1996, the position he held until his 2009 promotion.
“The people that chose us to come work here, most of them lived here, most of them grew up here,” Taylor says. “So they wanted to be a part of this. And that allowed us as an organization to offer a high-quality, customer-centered, focused service.”
By the people, for the people
Paxton and Taylor have had great influence over how the Violet Township Fire Department is run today. They heavily emphasize the daily process, never skipping a beat when making sure that they can get out the door in an instant.
Courtesy of Violet Township
Kenn Taylor at a training fire
Taylor says the adrenaline rush of a call can be one great motivator, and the closeness of firefighters – both among each other and with the community – is another.
“Most guys, (the pressure) causes them to make better choices, right? It’s all about serving the public,” Taylor says. “Our motto became ‘friends for life.’ And that means a whole lot of different things. … There’s times where it’s like, ‘I’m your friend for life right now; without me, you’re not alive.’”
This philosophy carries over into the way the fire department always goes the extra mile when helping the community.
“It was something that I pushed on them in the beginning and they thought it was a gimmick, it was a phrase. But after a few years, it was like, ‘Why were you on that call so long?’ And they go, ‘Well I was doing that friend for life stuff, chief. Mrs. Smith was having a bad day, I finished her laundry and I did this and that for her and we finished shoveling a guy’s driveway,’” Taylor says.
The community’s faith and trust in the fire department is not something the paramedics and firefighters take lightly. Setting themselves aside and prioritizing community needs is paramount at the station.
“You have to take it humbly, if you look at our core values, one’s humility. Every day you can’t get caught up in the occupation and think you’re a hero,” Paxton says. “One of the big terms here is ‘the mission,’ right? Can you fulfill the mission? The mission might be reading library books to fifth graders today, and it might be fighting fires, and it might be 1,000 things in between. But we need you to be professional and humbly serve all of those components.”
Hanging the hose up for good
Taylor has a friend who worked in the postal service who retired the first day that he could. Taylor, however, says he can’t fathom not enjoying work every day.
“He was out as soon as he could get out, and there isn’t a day that I’m like, ‘Oh, crap, I gotta go to the firehouse.’ No, I get up and I’m going to the firehouse today,” Taylor says.
With retirement fast approaching, Taylor says they will miss making calls and doing runs, but most of all they will miss sitting around the table, making jokes and “solving a lot of the world’s problems.”
Courtesy of Violet Township
Jim Paxton
These lifelong friends’ final day in the station is the last Sunday in January. They are both grateful to be stepping away on their own terms, knowing they put everything they had into their work and that the Violet Township Fire Department is ready for whatever lies ahead.
“I think fire service in general is one of the greatest jobs ever created. And for the opportunity to do it here has meant more than I could ever explain. Doing this at home in this community has been really, really special,” Paxton says. “For me and him, we’ve lived our whole lifetime childhood goal out, and I don’t know many people get to do that. I walk away here excited for the future of what the place is going to be.”
Tyler Kirkendall is an editor at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at tkirkendall@cityscenemediagroup.com.
