Event helps fund volunteer fire departments

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Auctioneer Ken Pearse sells items to the highest bidder at a previous fire department support team fundraiser. Courtesy photo

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March 18, 2013

Event helps fund volunteer fire departments

By GREG RUSSELL, Register Staff Writer The Daily Register Mon Mar 18, 2013, 10:09 AM CDT

Valley View — VALLEY VIEW — Admission is still available for Saturday’s dinner and auction in Valley View conducted on behalf of several Cooke County volunteer fire departments.

The fourth annual event — benefiting the Cooke County Fire Support & Rehab Team — is set for 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the “reach out center” of First Baptist Church, 503 N. Lee St. in Valley View. Tickets are $6 for adults and $4 for children and will be available at the door.

Profits for the dinner and auction tend to be in the range of $10,000, which rehab team members use to buy medical gear for firefighters. This includes medical bags, hydration supplies, gas detection meters and “cooling chairs” that provide firefighters physical relief from heat stress.

And while the team’s financial focus is always on helping firefighters, its members are also certified in rescue techniques, which puts them in a position to assist victims on the scene if needed.

As during the past three years, the event’s auction items will include farm and ranch supplies, automotive equipment, pet items, homemade gifts and gift packages. Team secretary Toni Bartram added that this year, the auction roster will include tickets to Disneyland and to Texas Rangers and Dallas Stars games.

Many of the items were donated by local businesses, she said, a sign of major support.

“The community is great and very involved in supporting us,” Bartram said Saturday. “And the whole reason they support us is that we’re helping not with just the rehab team but with buying the equipment that they wouldn’t be able to afford otherwise, because they’re volunteers.”

During the 2012 auction, also held at the Valley View church, visitor Parker Luke said the participants and dinner crowd were helping enable a truly worthy endeavor in progress.

“Many of the individuals are enthusiastic about helping out, and it’s a good cause,” he said.

Bartram said Saturday that her team initially began exclusive to Valley View’s volunteer fire department before expanding in March 2012 to accommodate all county departments.

So far, the team has provided aid to departments in Moss Lake, Lake Kiowa, Oak Ridge and Callisburg. No Cooke County volunteer fire department is shunned from the team’s help, she said, but the money must be in place.

And Bartram added that budget items aren’t always medical; the team’s most recent board meeting saw a purchase of fire truck tires for Valley View’s department.

“Our fundraiser is what keeps us going throughout the year and that way, we can continue,” she said. “When a fire department gives us a list of some of the items they need, we go through and pick the things we can afford so that we can still have a budget in case another fire department asks for purchases. We kind of space it out.”

For more information about the event, call (940) 726-6017.