Jill Fennema
Edgerton Enterprise
Al Vis has a passion for being a fireman. He has been a member of the Chandler Volunteer Fire Department for 50 years. At the end of 2018, he will turn in his turnout gear and pager.
Al joined the Chandler Fire Department in 1968. At that time he was employed at Greig Grain Co, which would later be bought out by Prins Grain.
One day in the fall of 1968, there was a tremendous straight-line wind. Peter Reit-sma had a fire that was under control. But the heavy wind caused the embers of that fire to reignite. A pile of bales started on fire from those blowing embers.
Al recalls that it was a thunder/lightning storm and his wife, Dorothy, commented to him that she was sure glad that he did not have to go out in that weather. At that same time, their neighbor Gerrit Doppenberg, a volunteer fireman, got the call and jumped in his truck. As he drove past the Vis home, he rolled down his window and said, “Hey, Vis, you want to come help fight a fire?”
Al did want to do that. The rest, as they say, is history. Not long after, at the first fire department meeting in January 1969, Al officially joined the Chandler FD.
“I got the firebug,” Al recalls. His first fire after joining was a house fire in Iona, where Chandler was called for mutual aid. One of the biggest fires he ever helped fight was a grain elevator fire in Lake Wilson. He also recalls elevator fires in Slayton and two in Iona throughout his career.
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