Plans are under way for a
By Burl Burlingame
Honolulu Fire Department museum
at the historic Kakaako
Fire Station
Star-BulletinTake a close look at the rank insignia of Honolulu Fire Department officers. Those aren't hydrants. They're trumpets, and for more than a century, an actual firefighting tool. The chief used it to bellow orders during fires, amplifying his voice above the din, and the firefighters could tell at a glance where the chief was, because he was the guy with the trumpet.
Although the invention of portable radios pretty much did in the trumpet as a firefighting tool, the instrument remains a badge of rank. The fire chief's collar features five miniature trumpets; deputy chiefs have four; assistant chiefs have three; battalion chiefs two and captains one trumpet.
Honolulu's fire department, the oldest organized west of the Rockies -- signed into being by Kamehameha III in 1850, which also makes it the only American fire department sponsored by royalty -- was headed almost immediately by Alexander Cartwright, later to be a Civil War hero and much later to be considered one of the creators of baseball.
King Kalakaua was an enthusiastic volunteer fireman and pitched in battling Honolulu blazes.Chief E.C. Williams was photographed with a trumpet in 1867, and all subsequent chiefs were photographed with the same instrument. That is, until the late 1950s, when the trumpet mysteriously vanished from HFD inventory.
You'd know all of this already if there were a museum or learning center devoted to Honolulu's unique firefighting history. But there isn't one.
Yet.
There are plans in the next budget cycle for the Fire Department to include a museum in its soon-to-be-renovated historic Kakaako station on South Street. HFD headquarters is in prefab office space in an airport industrial building, and the plan is to move to Kakaako ASAP.
"These are OK offices," said Fire Chief Attilio K. Leonardi, looking around at the stark drywall. "But they don't really have a sense of history, do they?"
There are sound economic and timing reasons for creating a museum, not to mention a friendly rivalry with the Honolulu Police Department, which has a gun-heavy museum in its Beretania Street office building. HFD has had such a museum on the back burner for at least a decade.
But then a sign, almost mystic, appeared. The golden trumpet of Honolulu's fire chiefs appeared out of the blue. It had been gone almost 40 years, and recently was symbolically used in the change-of-command ceremony from Chief Anthony Lopez to Chief Leonardi.
The pictures here of Leonardi with the trumpet are the first published, and continue a tradition that goes back to 1867."We got a call from a retired chief officer who found it on a shelf after all these years," chuckled Leonardi.
If the pieces fall into place, the new office and museum should be ready by 2003.
"The site plan is ready -- we've been working on it for 10 years -- and the (fire department) mechanics are moving out of the South Street location," said Leonardi. "There have been delays while they examine the soil for bones and such, but if the funding is there, we'll be able to get started next year."
Although the department already has a small collection of artifacts, including the bullet-damaged fire engine that served in the Pearl Harbor attack, there is no place right now to put donations.
"Can't do it without a museum -- if there's a display gallery, things will come back," said Leonardi. "We already have retirees volunteering to be docents."
The South Street station is considered a Hawaii historic landmark, meaning it's a valuable and tangible link to Hawaii's cultural and architectural past, the sort of structure that defines our unique sense of place.
Other cities with firefighting traditions, such as Boston and Baltimore, also have fire-department museums that have proved popular with the public. Portland has a museum in an operating station, in which patrons can look through glass at daily operations.
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