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Cliff Kroger celebrating 90th birthday
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July 19, 2012 |
 On
Thursday, July 26, a Bonners Ferry icon will
celebrate his 90th birthday, and everyone in the
community is welcome to attend Cliff Kroger's
surprise party.
Cliff was born in his family's house on Hunston
Street, Oroville, California, July 26, 1922 ,
and one of his earliest memories is hearing the
alarm that sent firefighters scrambling,
including his father, who was Oroville's fire
chief when he came into this world.
Growing up in a firefighting family, Cliff's
life would mirror his father's in many ways.
Like his father and two of his brothers, Cliff
as never far from the smell of smoke, serving on
fire departments in Oroville, Carson, Nevada,and
Cle Ellum, Washington, before joining the
Bonners Ferry Fire Department in 1969.
Shortly after he was born, the people of
Oroville provided Cliff's father an official car
so he wouldn't have to run to the fire hall
every time a fire call came in. Even before
then, his fellow firefighters razzed him about
sleeping in his turnouts, so quickly did he
respond.
Generations of Bonners Ferry firefighters razzed
Cliff with the very same words; for nearly 30
years, very few ever reached the barn quicker
than he did.
In 1950, Cliff married Barbara Kroeger in Carson
City, Nevada, and it wasn't long before they
were raising their own generation of
firefighters.
It wasn't just the smell of smoke that defined
his life, either. While serving as a volunteer
firefighter, Cliff earned his living with ink in
his veins, serving as pressman for several
newspapers for most of a century that was marked
by change, from the old hand operated presses
through linotype. He saw first radio and then
television come along to challenge the newspaper
as the primary way people got their news.
He hung up his ink-stained apron at the Bonners
Ferry Herald in 1985, and became Bonners Ferry's
full time fire chief on New Year's Day, 1987, a
position he held for a decade until he retired,
at age 75, in 1997.
Over the years, Cliff's passion for firefighting
infected two daughters, a nephew and two
grandchildren, and Cliff did everything he could
to share with them his encyclopedic knowledge
and experience. His two daughters and two
grandchildren are firefighters and/or emergency
medical technicians to this day, raising their
families to the smell of smoke and service to
community.
The smell of smoke didn't let go after his
retirement, either. A lifetime member of the
Idaho Fire Chief's Association since 1984, he's
spent the past several years gathering material
and pictures for a history of the Bonners Ferry
Department which he's shared with the Boundary
County Museum and the Smoke Eaters.
According to his family, Cliff has no idea that
a party in his honor is being held on this
milestone day, and they're hoping no one spills
the beans ... that's why this story isn't in the
Herald, which he reads faithfully!
It's being held at 6 p.m. Thursday, July 26,
where else but in the Bonners Ferry Fire Hall.
The family asks that no one bring gifts, just
your company and your memories. Hamburgers are
being provided by the BFFD, buns and beverages
by Boundary Volunteer Ambulance, and the
birthday cake by Super 1 Foods. |
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