“I tried to be a firefighter. It’s a tough profession, very demanding and difficult and I have a lot of respect for them,” says Wayne Smith, a forester with the City of Santa Clarita.
Instead, the Castaic resident has been collecting fire station patches with the passion of a kid trading baseball cards. The hobby is a way to honor the profession with patches collected and traded from around world, 140 patches to date, including one from Lebanon and the other from Kuwait.
“It was a crazy idea and it just took off,” says Smith.
The patches are designed by the firefighters at each station and are a strong symbol of their camaraderie. The firefighters have their individual uniform fire patches, these station patches are an altogether different kind of symbol of the personalities at the stations.
“Station number 111 engine and squad company has a Maltese cross on their patch with flames on it and the ace of clubs, ace of hearts and ace of spaces to represent the 3-1s in their station number,” says Smith excitedly.
One Malibu fire station has a bear holding a fire hatchet while balancing himself on a surfboard.
It was Smith’s 12-year-old son and his hockey travels that kicked off Smith’s interest in fire station patch collecting. They were in Las Vegas for a tournament and Smith stopped by the Clark County Fire Department and when he saw thousands of patches displayed there on sheets of plywood, he was enthralled and started collecting. He proudly displays his patches in his office.
“At first when I’d return from a hockey trip with my son, people would stop by my office and sorta laugh at my meager collection, now the first thing they say after a trip is ‘Did you get any patches?’” says Smith.
Other patches he owns include the Castaic number 149 patch with a cartoon figure of a bass fish wearing a fire uniform with a fire ax in one fin, fish line in the other fin and flames of fire attached to the hook.
“It’s a really fun hobby. I love seeing the designs,” says Smith.
And while Smith may not be faced with the challenging and dangerous job of saving lives as a firefighter, if he had become one, he no doubt would have been a dedicated one with a strong sense of pride. For now, he says his job as a forester is very rewarding and he finds the creativity and solidarity of the nation’s firefighters to be very inspiring.