March 30, 2018--
Ralph Domenici came out of the steel mills and was a member of the Pawtucket Fire Department from 1973-2004. He and his wife each worked two jobs, raised six kids, and are now enjoying their retirement. This interview was conducted in his kitchen. This is only part of what he said ... TT- I love those pics. Especially the one of Chief Mercer. I never would've recognized him. And that's also the first time I've seen Tommy Heaney. RD- I had more pics but I don't know where they've gone too. TT- Take us back to the beginning. What year did you get on, and how old were you? RD- I got on in 1973, I was almost thirty-two. Back then, thirty-two was the cutoff. If you were older than that you couldn't get on the job. So I got in August of '73 and I was thirty-two. I just made the cutoff. This was also when the four-days on, four-days off started. That's why they put on the extra guys. TT- So it went from three days, three nights, three off, to four-on, four-off. RD- Right. TT- What did you do before you got here? RD- I worked in the steel mill. Newman Crosby was on Columbus Avenue. Back then that was the big money. Back then, I lost a hundred dollars a week to get on the fire department. But I knew it was getting ready to close. And it closed three years after that. TT- No kidding. So like, you were working there in 1969-1970. RD- Yup. TT- You saw the future and knew it was gonna close down. Newman and Crosby you said? RD- Yup. TT- What kind of steel were they making? RD- They made steel for almost everywhere in the country. They made some big big things. A lot of guys on the job--Kenny Noiseaux for instance--he worked there. He got on right after I did. And another guy who died, Kurt Richards, he worked there too. Frank Sylvester, who I don't want to talk about. TT- (laughs) Are we talking about fabrication steel? Like I-beams and girders? RD- No no, not that kind. The flat stock. Like for the sides of toasters and things like that. TT- Stainless steel. RD- Right. TT- How long did you work there for? RD- Nine years. TT- So basically after high school you just went to work. RD- I did. TT- Any military time? RD- National Guard. TT- You ever get deployed anywhere? RD- No. TT- So you got on in '73. What was your process? Did you have an academy or did you just go on the job? RD- We had an academy. Two nights a week and Saturdays. TT- Just like ours forty years later. Incredible. Unpaid? RD- Yes. TT- Same here. How many guys? RD- Thirteen guys. Twelve finished and one guy quit for some reason. I don't remember why. TT- Now as far as when you got on, who were some of the guys you looked up to? Those are World War II guys, right? RD- Some of them were. When I started on Engine 4, Ray Cody was the lieutenant. Ray Gene, who is still alive, and Willie Plant, who's still alive as far as I know. I can't remember who the Battalion Chief was. TT- Now those were the guys you looked up to? RD- Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, they'd been on ten years ... I think Ray Cody had thirteen years. It was funny, back in those days it was all politics as far as getting promoted. In fact the guy who was in charge of the house, Frank Cavino, he was just some friend of a politician, and they put him on the job as a lieutenant. TT- (laughs) Come on. RD- He was in charge of the Broadway station. (Laughs) TT- That's crazy. Wow. Safe to say there was some shenanigans going on with the promotions. RD- Oh yeah. TT- So in 1973, they had airpacks but not everyone was wearing them, right? RD- Used to be there was one regular sized one, and they used to have one they called the lieutenant's airpack. It was about half the size. It was about that big (motions two feet apart). Nobody ever used them. If you used them, they laughed at you. TT- Right? RD- Those guys used to put a sponge in their mouth. TT- The sponge guys. Chickie was telling me about them. Were you a sponge guy? RD- Yeah. You had to be. (Laughs) RD- One guy, Leo Masse, he smoked alot. And we'd have fires--like a kitchen fire, smoky as a bastard, you know what I mean? And you'd come in and barely breath, and you'd be crawling on the floor, or in a bedroom for a mattress fire, crawling around on the floor, and Leo Masse would come in and give you one of these-- "Hey!" He'd be standing up, "Hey! Come on, get up. Get up. Let's go!" You'd be spitting your guts out and he'd be standing there. (Laughs) TT- Leo Masse? RD- Yeah. TT- That's the first time I've heard his name. Sounds pretty old school to me. They were talking about Timmy Hayes doing the same thing. Walking around with a cigarette in the middle of a fire. RD- Different day. TT- So you were right in that transition point where they were going from the mills to where we are now, which is still kind of struggling along. Talk about the Fourth of July. A lot of people that didn't grow up here have no idea exactly how much mayhem there was for eighty years. We're talking 200 runs a night, bonfires, house fires ... RD- It was only us, Pawtucket and Providence, that had nights like that. We used to send an engine company to Providence. Warwick sent an engine company to Providence, and they used to run with like 15 or 20 engine companies. Of course they're three times the size of Pawtucket. But we had our share of runs. Some years we'd go out at eight o'clock and not get back until the next morning. They'd have runs all lined up--the Alarm Room would have runs all lined up--and you'd clear one run and head to the next. You'd clear Grace Street and sometimes be sent all the way across the city for the next one, depending how bad it was. TT- So you guys were just running around all night. Now this went from the 1920's until the early 2000s. RD- Yup. TT- Brulé was talking about some guy showing up from Wisconsin, and he was like, "I heard Pawtucket's the place to be on July Fourth." RD- They used to come from everywhere to ride on the trucks that night. Or follow them around. It was crazy. TT- Chickie was saying it was still a sailor town back then too. Quonset Point was still open, the Navy, the fishermen. The weekends in Pawtucket were a bloodbath. Busy busy busy. RD- Yup. TT- Let's backtrack. You started off on Engine 4 and how long did you stay there? RD- Probably two years at the most. I went to Ladder 3 on Columbus Avenue, spent maybe four years there, all the time trying to get downtown but I didn't have enough seniority. I wanted to get on Engine 2, and after I finally did, I stayed there the rest of my career. TT- So you were like seven years in before you got to Engine 2? RD- At least. TT- So we're talking like 1979, 1980? RD- Yes. TT- Now who was downtown with you? Who was the crew? RD- The crew at that time was Tommy Heaney, Ray Masse Senior, Jerry Gendreau was the lieutenant, and on the ladder was Dick Ryan, Kurt Richards, and Mike Noonan. TT- What happened to Kurt Richards? RD- He had cirrhosis. Never drank, or very seldom, he'd maybe have a beer here or there. But Kurt and I went to school together in Seekonk. TT- People said he was in shape, he was squared away, knew his shit, but died of liver disease and wasn't even a boozer. That's heartbreaking. RD- It was. TT- Was he still on the job when he passed? RD- Yes. TT- That must've been brutal. RD- It was. TT- So you got downtown, you're with the fellas, now Tommy Heaney, I heard some funny stories about him. Just being a nutbag. RD- He was by far the best firefighter I ever worked with. I learned more from Tom Heaney, and Ray Masse as well, but I think Tom was even a step above Ray. They were just super super firefighters. TT- Chickie said the same thing. He said Tommy Heaney had balls as big as his head. RD- He sure did. TT- Now when we talk about Heaney, I don't even know this guy. Haven't even seen a picture. I just know of him. Now, when you got downtown, how long had he been on the job? RD- Probably like sixteen years. (Shows me a picture) TT- Oh, that's him? Wow. RD- This is the shift downtown. These guys all retired. TT- Who are these guys? RD- That's Mike Brindamour, Tim Mercer, Tom McGarry, Tom Heaney, Dick Fuller and Mike Sholas. This pic is Joe Burns, Bob Thurber Senior, Frank Boisclair, John Mensa, Farrel, and Bobby Hammond. (Brindamour would go on to become Battalion Chief, Mercer became Assistant Chief, Burns, Boisclair, and Thurber were all Chief of Department at some point). TT- Wow. Great pics. Now as far as Heaney goes, you were saying you were learning from him on the fireground itself. How to read things, when to break this, I mean we're talking about the basics of firefighting. RD- Yes. TT- Did he ever say who he learned it all from? RD- He worked with Gerry Gendreau, I think he's still alive. He was one of the guys that crossed the picket line, so at the end we had some problems with him. But he was a hell of a firefighter. I'll give anybody that crossed the picket line even back then, if they were a good firefighter they were a good firefighter. What they did I didn't believe in, I didn't condone, but they were good firefighters. Gerry Gendreau was one of the best. TT- Wow. So Tommy Heaney, he descended from him. RD- Yes. TT- Then he taught you and Chickie ... RD- Yes. TT- So you were on Engine 2. What year did you make lieutenant? RD- 1988. TT- So you were fifteen years in by then. RD- Yes. TT- And what shift were you on? RD- A-shift. I was lucky I didn't have to go to another shift in my whole career. TT- How many total years did you work? RD- Almost thirty-one. TT- Wow. And all that, other than Engine 4 and Ladder 3, it was all Engine 2, downtown. RD- Yes. But we had a lot of transfers back then. You didn't know where the hell you were gonna be. TT- Now let's talk about the gear. We're talking about tin helmets, melt-away gloves--the gloves were so terrible they'd melt on your hands-- RD- (Laughs) Yup. They were freaking rubber gloves. All you had were hip boots, and most guys wore them rolled down, unless you were going into deep water or something, your khakis were ruined from here to here (knees to waist.) You'd bring them home to be washed and the wife would want to kill ya. The old jackets that they had-- TT- We're talking vinyl jackets? RD- Some were vinyl. One time on Engine 4, it had to go out for some work. Their back-up was an old Maxim, but it had no roof over the cab. The roof was wide open. So you'd be driving in a rainstorm and it would be coming in on top of ya. TT- That's crazy. You were there for the EMS transition, when it started taking over. I mean before 1980 no one was calling 911 for headaches, stomach aches, right? RD- Nope. TT- It never happened. People aren't like they are now. There's been this kind of generational shift where now people call 911 for everything. As far as close calls, did you have any? RD- Not really. I was really pretty lucky as far as that. I always considered going down into a basement a close call every time because you didn't know where the hell you were going or what was down there or not. And there was probably only one way out--the way you came in. And if you get turned around down there ... You had to keep your hands on the hose--don't let go of the hose. TT- Bob Thurber Jr said the same thing. He almost got killed three different times in basements and he hated them. RD- Yeah. TT- Hated them. The worst part is just getting down there because you're basically walking down through a chimney, right? RD- Yup. It was dangerous business. TT- And you guys weren't even wearing air packs. RD- Back then the radios were pretty bad, as far as there was only one walkie-talkie and the lieutenant had that. And back then, (he whispers), most of the lieutenants stayed outside. TT- (laughs) RD- So when you went down that basement you didn't have a radio or nothing. You were just going down there bare-assed. TT- Jesus. Now let's talk about the Narragansett Racetrack fire. Some people don't know that Pawtucket had a state of the art race track for horses that was nationally known. Are we talking about 1978? RD- Something like that. We got there and I think I was on Ladder 3 at the time. Or Engine 3, one of the two, I can't remember. Anyway, we got there before the 6's. So we get there and the barns were going like hell. The horses were going crazy. TT- Did they get the horses out of there? RD- Some of the jockeys were there, the guys that cleaned the stables, we were helping them pull the horses out but if you read anything about almost every kind of animal, like my two dogs out there, we were pulling the horses out and letting them go, and you'd turn around and they would be running back in. TT- Oh no. RD- You know? That was their home. And they were scared to be out of it. And the next morning when the sun came up the barns were gone. They were like this (makes an EKG like line to show lumps in the ash). It was the horses. Everything fell on top of them and they were dead. TT- Jesus. How many horses are we talking about? RD- I don't even remember. Had to be twenty-twenty-five horses. TT- That's awful. Talk about big fire, it sounds like when you guys pulled up it was ripping. RD- Yes. TT- How'd it start? RD- Back then the guys who took care of the horses were kind of street people. There was straw and hay everywhere and the theory at the time was that someone tossed a cigarette. TT- You were there all day. RD- I don't remember what time at night-- TT- Oh this was a night fire? RD- It was a night fire. TT- What about Star Gas? Were you there for that? RD- That was the day they had the golf tournament. I was with Timmy Mercer, Gary Pappas, and somebody else, maybe one of my brothers. He used to come every once and a while. And we were at the backside of the Pawtucket Country Club, like near Seekonk. We didn't hear anything, didn't know anything, we came back and we were looking around saying "Where the hell is everybody?" "Oh, don't you guys know that Star Gas finally blew up?" "What're you talking about?" Then off in the distance you could see the smoke. I said to somebody, "Well, should we go?" "Oh they got plenty of help." "Good. That means more beer for us." (laughs). We never heard anything, no explosion, no nothing. TT- The younger people reading this won't realize there was a time when there were no cell phones. Anyway, Chickie said he'd already had one too many and the chief just said, "Go back to where you were." RD- (laughs) TT- Now let's talk about the picket line stuff. What exactly was going on with that? they were trying to break the union by wanting people to cross it, right? The picket line was basically broken by how many guys? RD- There was probably six or seven. At least. Some of the guys, like Gerry Gendreau, Frank Sylvester who was a big big union man in the steel mill before he went over there, I can't remember the rest. They were just looking for promotions. You know? And they didn't care about the rest. We were fighting for outside testing and they were offering to promote guys or they were gonna run a test and promote guys by the old process and we didn't want that. TT- Which is why no one took a promotion for years. Because they were political and not based on merit. Can you think you think of any other events? RD- We had a big fire on Front Street. Down Central Avenue, you know where Collette Travel is now? TT- Yes. RD- On the other side of the street was a huge mill. It ran like 500 yards. Massive place. And it started, we were on duty that day, but we were up on Smithfield Avenue doing CPR training. The box came in and Joe Burns, who was on Ladder 2, he got there and said, "This is a Code Red." I was on the rescue with Frank Sylvester and Gerry Gendreau came down and when he crossed the Exchange Street bridge he called the Alarm Room and told them to send everybody. Make it a General Alarm. That's how bad that place was going. TT- So as far as General Alarms go, you might see three or four in a whole career, so it's a pretty big deal. (General Alarm is a mandatory call back of all off duty personnel. With 32 on a normal shift, that means 128 FFs.) RD- It is. TT- That thing sounds like it was ripping. RD- Yeah, the whole thing went down. From one end to the other. We were fighting it and fighting it but we were just backing up, throwing as much water as we could but you couldn't put it out. TT- You couldn't stop it. Like standing in front of a train. RD- Yeah. Exactly. TT- What year did you finally retire? RD- 2004. TT- That's a long career. Any injuries? RD- Just a knee, but that was the only one. I was very lucky. Never got burned. TT- Do you have any regrets? RD- No. Actually yes. I wish I had gotten on when I was younger. (laughs) TT- It's true. I got on late too. I was in construction and other stuff so I didn't get on the job until I was thirty-eight. RD- How long you been on now? TT- Nine years. But it's true, if you get on early you get that extra jump. What made you decide to join up? RD- The mill was closing down. I almost got divorced because I lost $100 a week taking the fire department job. And I used to get a lot of overtime at the mill and the fire department didn't have any OT. It was always just straight pay. I think my first check was $115 a week before taxes. TT- How did you deal with it? You never brought any of it home? Just did it the old school way and went and a had a few beers with the fellas and talked it out, right? RD- Pretty much. I had six kids, so I always worked two jobs. My wife was a nurse and she always worked two jobs. With six kids you had to. In fact one time, when I was on the fire department and she was a nurse, with the six kids I was eligible for food stamps. TT- Jesus. RD- I got food stamps for a while, I think for a $100 they gave me $80, so it was only like getting ahead twenty bucks, that's how low the pay was. TT- That's terrifying. We haven't had a raise in like eight years. It is, you're right. Sometimes it's a struggle. Six kids? RD- Yup. TT- What was your second job? RD- I installed carpet. TT- The whole way through? Carpet and FD? RD- Yeah, and every once in a while I would work Pelletier Trucking, the rigging company over here? I used to work for them part time. If I wasn't installing carpets I'd go work with them or vice versa. I always had to have two jobs. TT- Can you think of anything else you'd like to talk about? RD- No, that's about it. I loved the job. I wish I had gotten on earlier. It was a great job. TT- Fun, right? RD- The only thing they had back then that you guys don't have now .. they used to sit us down, every cycle, usually your second day. They'd sit you down at the table just like you and me right here. Everybody on the two trucks downtown had to take a seat at the table and do street drills. TT- Quizing each other on the streets. There wasn't no satellites or GPS back then, right? RD- If you went out the door and didn't know your street, when you got back you sat down at the table with your street book, the lieutenant would make you sit down and go over every one of them again. TT- That's the old school. And there was more self-discipline back then. We're trying to get back to that now, because we've had such a flood of new guys. I'm not even nine years in and I've got eighty guys beneath me. RD- Wow. TT- Crazy turnover. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. Too many new guys and not enough old guys is not a very good recipe. Some of these newer dudes don't get it, and need to be put back in a line a little bit, so the older crowd is flexing back. But the old school way, as you know and Chickie used to talk about it, you didn't go in the kitchen and sit down and have a coffee and read the paper before the lieutenant did, right? You always made coffee, you cleaned, went through your street-books and protocols, like it's a job, right? RD- From what I've been told about the new guys, I'm sure there's a lot that are really good, but I'm sure you got some real nags too. Like we did too. Guys that wouldn't go into fires. I just see it right now--I was talking to somebody who said guys come in and sit around the table and nobody talks to each other. Everybody's on their devices. TT- Brulé was saying the same thing. It was driving him crazy at the end. "I don't want to sit around looking at my phone. I want to talk to somebody." Well, I really appreciate you taking the time. RD- It was my pleasure. TT- Sounds like you had a great career. RD- I did. Thanks for coming over.
3 Comments
Leo Masse
5/18/2018 07:07:34 pm
Ralph Domenici, that was a dead on my dad, thanks for the memories.
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Kari
6/4/2018 03:41:01 pm
Still the most incredible man I no. My dad
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Susan doliveira
6/4/2018 04:23:02 pm
Thankful for all your years of service Ralph...ive got great respect for you. Xo
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AuthorTom Trabulsi was born in the Midwest, attended high school in Rhode Island, and graduated from Boston University with a degree in American History. He was a bike courier in Boston and New York City, worked construction in the mountain west and east coast, and is currently a firefighter in a northeast city. Archives
August 2022
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