Would you believe our community’s first 911 dispatchers were volunteers working out of their homes?
The world, as they say, was a different place in the 1960s and 1970s. Perhaps none more different – then from now – than West Chester Township, Ohio.
Imagine, if you can, a community of 35-square miles without a single traffic signal. That was the situation Jim Detherage stepped into when he moved north from urban Hamilton County to rural Butler County to take a job in law enforcement and raise a family here with his wife Jennifer, a Lakota graduate.
“When I started up here, I think I was the sixth full-time police officer hired,” Jim said. His career in public service in West Chester (Union Township) began at the end of 1971. He initially worked as a police officer and volunteer firefighter until he was hired to become our first-ever full-time Fire Chief in 1977.
The West Chester Fire Department celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2023. The West Chester Police Department was founded on April 17, 1967, four years later.
“You used to work by yourself. I mean, you were the only one patrolling the Township,” Jim remembers of his time on the police beat. He said in those days, calls for service didn’t always include a numbered address where emergency response crews needed to make the run. Rather, callers would give a description of the location, a landmark or a nickname – Rosselot’s Curve, Keehner Farm, and so on.
“When they started the Fire Department in 1963, there were four women that did the dispatching from their home,” Jim said. He recently sat down for an interview with the West Chester Community Storytellers video series.
“So you would get, usually, a fireman’s wife that would be dispatching for you. And that happened up until they started the full-time Police Department. And then they moved into the basement of Firehouse No. 2 on John Road and set up the dispatch center there. They started hiring full-time dispatchers, as well, to take care of the Police, Fire and EMS calls.”
A newspaper clipping taken from the Pisgah Courier in fall 1972 tells of the Board of Trustees’ ultimate decision to implement a dedicated 911 dispatch center. At that time, West Chester’s population hovered around 13,000.
The rest is history.
Today, our community of 66,000 residents is fortunate to live in a place where a staff of about 15 full-time professional communications officers are on duty 24/7/365. Dispatchers operate from the state-of-the-art West Chester 911 Emergency Communications Center, responding to well beyond 100,000 calls for service each year as a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) center.
Fire Chief Jim Detherage’s time at the helm accounts for exactly half of the West Chester Fire Department’s 60 years in existence. He worked tirelessly for three decades to protect residents and stakeholders, and later served as a liaison between the Police and Fire Departments in the specially-created position of Public Safety Director from 2007 to 2009, seeing the community through some of its most transformative years. His teams laid the groundwork for services we maybe take for granted today. Things like fire inspection and prevention programs, paramedic and technical rescue service, and a hazardous materials unit, as well as first responder training and professional development opportunities.
As our first full-time Fire Chief, Jim Detherage also carries the distinction of being the person who hired the only other people to ever hold the title, bringing on both Fire Chief Tony Goller (2007-2015) and Fire Chief Rick Prinz (2015-present) very early in their firefighting careers, before each were promoted up the ranks.
“Now of course I didn’t do all that myself,” Jim said. “I had a lot of help from dedicated people within the department who understood we needed those things as well. And of course those things came along as a result of the growth of the Township.”
You can watch Jim’s interview, and more than two dozen interviews with many of our founding families and pivotal leaders, on West Chester TV at www.WestChesterOH.org/WCTV.
Have a story you’d like to tell?
Established in 1823, West Chester Township is celebrating its bicentennial anniversary and is seeking community storytellers for an oral history project. Complete a quick questionnaire to get started.
Read the October 25, 1972 article from the now-defunct Pisgah Courier in its entirety below.
TRUSTEES PLAN DISPATCH CENTER
From: Pisgah Courier, October 25, 1972
By Alice Battaglia
Union Township trustees, preparing for the establishment of a township radio dispatching center, have begun taking applications for three full-time radio operators and about four part-time dispatchers.
Installation of the communications center in the township is anticipated by January, said trustee Larry Gundler at the board’s October 10 meeting. The township has already been granted a frequency and a license from the FCC.
The center would bring dispatching services for fire department, life squad, and police department together ‘under one roof,’ said Gundler. Dispatching for fire and life squad units, up to this point, has been handled by volunteers operating radio sets in their homes, while the police force has been dispatched through the county sheriff’s office.
The center will be located in the police offices on the lower level of the John Street firehouse, Pisgah.
Trustees are accepting applications for dispatchers for an indefinite period, and they have requested applications be sent to the township clerk, Marcellus Osner, at P.O. Box 177, West Chester, 45069.
Applicants should be between the ages of 18 and 65, and some typing skill would be required, especially for the full-time posts. The part-time positions would involve mainly relief duty—probably less than twenty hours a week, said trustees.
Salary for the posts start at $2.25 per hour.
In other action, trustees purchased a second salt spreader for the township, awarding the contract to King Equipment Company, Monroe, for its low bid of $1,217.50. Trustees also voted to buy the winter supply of road salt from Morton Salt Company, Cincinnati, at $8.95 per ton.
A newsletter recently circulated in the Highland Greens complex by the apartment management drew criticism from trustees Gundler and James Williams at this meeting. Apartment residents were asked, in the newsletter, to vote against the proposed two-mill road levy which will appear on the township’s November ballot.
Trustees criticized the isolationist attitude conveyed by the apartment management, pointing out that the residents do use other township services, including fire, life squad, and police service, as well as the schools. Trustees added they felt most Highland Greens residents considered themselves a part of the community. ‘We are talking about total community improvement here,’ said Gundler.
Noting an increasing problem with road damage caused by heavy equipment near construction sites, trustees said they would contact all local developers and contractors to ask their co-operation in cleaning up and repairing damaged roads.
Trustees also voted to lease two additional polling places to accommodate the township’s two new precincts. Locations at Crestview Presbyterian Church and Pisgah Community Church of the Nazarene were rented at $30 each.