Greensburg firefighters museum gifted 1,000 detailed collectibles

As curator, Dick Johnson was grateful when a collection of firefighting memorabilia was bequeathed to the Greensburg Volunteer Fire Department Museum, but he had no idea what to expect when he and two other volunteers went to check it out.

"We were just in awe of what we saw," he said. "We had no idea, no concept, of how much stuff there was."

Firefighter Charles Horan, a firefighter in Washington Township, Fayette County, had amassed a collection of hundreds of model trucks, fire stations, boats and more, worth tens of thousands of dollars, and willed it all to the museum.

Horan died in an accident last year.

He met the volunteers who run the Greensburg Volunteer Fire Department Museum at state firefighting conventions over the years and struck up a friendship.

He told them several times that he planned to donate his collection of firefighting memorabilia, but they didn't know just how avid a collector he was.

Every room of his Fayette County home was lined with shelves, and every shelf was packed to capacity — sagging under the weight of the detailed, metal models.

"For us guys that are collectors, to walk in there and see that, it was just, 'Wow,'" Johnson said. "Never in my life have I seen so much fire memorabilia."

It took eight men five hours to pack two truckloads of firefighting memorabilia from Horan's home to transport to Greensburg, and they didn't get it all. Volunteers will need to make at least one more trip.

The small Greensburg museum displays old fire trucks and other antique equipment, but its collection of toys and models was fairly small until now, said museum President David Klingler.

"It gives us a new direction to go in," he said.

Horan's donation increases the size of the museum's collection about tenfold.

"It's overwhelming," Klinger said, "but we couldn't pass it up."

The museum has a room that's usually mostly empty, used to show films about the history of firefighting in Greensburg. Now that room is filled with cardboard boxes containing Horan's collection.

The plan is to line it with shelves to display the models.

"The detailing on this stuff is amazing," Johnson said. "It's the closest you can get to a real fire truck without having one."

The most valuable models in the collection are worth about $1,000 each.

The next step is organizing it all.

Museum officials plan to have "inventory parties" where volunteers will photograph and label each item from the collection, then log the details in a computer database.

Museum volunteer Tony Todaro said he hopes the collection will inspire children who visit the museum.

"These kids don't have the same concept of what being a fireman is," he said. "We were proud of being firemen."

Jacob Tierney is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-836-6646, jtierney@tribweb.com or via Twitter @Soolseem.