THREE North Herefordshire brothers have dedicated more than a century of service to their community as on-call firefighters.
The Vickress brothers, Dave, Graham and Robert from Leintwardine, have between them completed 104 years at the village’s fire station, where a crew of 11 male and two female firefighters serve.
Watch Commander Dave, who has also worked for Hereford & Worcester Fire and Rescue Service as an on-call support technician for the last 15 years, is the longest serving of the trio after signing up in November 1981.
Crew Commander Graham, whose role as a postman takes him as far as Newcastle on Clun, joined the Service in August 1990.
And Firefighter Robert, who is a carer, completed 27 years of service last December after first taking on the role in 1997.
For all three, it’s been a chance to follow in the footsteps on their father Derick who served for 32 years until 1984 when, under the rules in play at that time, he had to retire on reaching the age of 55.
Derick joined the then Herefordshire Fire Service in 1952, meaning that there’s been at least one Vickress at the village fire station for the last 73 years.
“There have been a lot of changes over the years,” said Dave, who served alongside his father for a couple of years and, at 63, is beginning to think about retirement.
“I wanted to see us get a new appliance and that’s happened; I wanted to complete 40 years to outlast our father’s service and I’ve done that; now I’d just like to see us get an extension to the fire station and I hope to still be around when that happens.”
“I thought that I might have got the Watch Commander’s job when Dave moved to Saundersfoot 11 years ago,” said Graham. “But he comes back to Leintwardine each week from Monday to Thursday to stay with Shirley, one of our two sisters, so that he can still be on-call.
“I probably won’t get that promotion now,” he joked.
“We’ve all been on many different calls, large and small, over the years,” said Robert. “Dave was at the Bedstone College fire in July 1996 and Graham at the Sun Valley fire in Hereford in 1992 but we all worked together on the big fire in Hereford city centre in 2010.”
All three are agreed on the importance of the work they do to serve the community.
“We are family, but there’s a family atmosphere among all of the crew who serve at the station,” said Dave.
