Last Tuesday afternoon, four ambassadors from the Benevolent Protection of ELKS Lodge 383 in Missoula stopped by the Superior Volunteer Fire Department, and this made Chief Scott Dodd a happy guy.

Corrina Stanley, Esteemed Lecturing Knight; David Elmore, Secretary of Lodge 383 and State Major Project Chairman; Tom Hightower, Exalted Ruler of Lodge 383; and Paul Manson, Esquire, answered the call for financial assistance with the presentation of a check.

Elmore explained the process.

“We send out applications every year (fall) to every volunteer fire department that we know of taking their needs request and we do what we can to help as many as possible. We go all over the state and when a fire department is chosen, the closest lodge makes the presentation. It’s very cool.”

There are 26 ELKS Lodges in Montana with 5,600 volunteers and this program is designed to assist volunteer fire departments with what is needed at the local level. Be it tools, training or equipment, the goal is to fill the request to perform their important functions safely and effectively. This program is about five years old as the Montana Elks Lodges used to do this for rural hospitals.

“We realized that so many of the small hospitals were being bought up by the larger ones so the opportunity to help wasn’t needed as much so we switched our focus to volunteer fire departments in smaller areas. They are like us, we’re all volunteers,” explained Elmore.

As a state, the lodge also receives Elks National Foundation money to assist with their gifting donations and this year 35 volunteer fire departments were recipients. The monetary gift varies in value as to what is most crucial for each department that filed an application. The SVFD needs new SCBA (Self Contained Breathing Apparatus) tanks and this donation will purchase 1 for them.

Hightower went on to say that ELKS Lodge 383 is doing well.

“We’re actually gaining members and we are working hard at both recruiting and fundraising. It’s not easy these days because volunteerism is a hard thing. It’s really hard to find people that want to serve their community this way. I still enjoy doing what we do, we just need help. New blood to give us a hand.”

In 1992, the organization allowed women to become members and Hightower said at the conferences he’s attending that at least 40% in turnout are women, which has made a huge difference in every arena.

Scott was going to put it to use immediately with new equipment.

“The idea is to hopefully outfit 2 firefighters with new equipment every year,” he explained on how his budget and expenditures are to work together.

Scott assigns the new gear to the most active and well-trained firefighters because they are typically the first ones running into burning buildings. He also said that he could always use more firefighters but as of today, he’s pretty good.

“Even if I had a hundred, I could use more volunteers because there is always stuff that needs to be done. And there always will be to become more proficient wherever we can. But, for where we’re at, we’ve got a great crew. We have 19 on the roster and very consistently close to a dozen showing up on most of our calls.”

Many people do not know that even as a volunteer firefighter in Superior, there are 2 different retirement programs if one meets the requirements. For further information, contact Scott Dodd at firechief@blackfoot.net.