Community recognizes Ullom for 50 years of service

By: EVELYN LONG -

They came to show their appre­ci­a­tion and wish him well when more than 225 peo­ple attended the recep­tion for Jim Ullom, who retired after serv­ing with the Card­ing­ton Vol­un­teer Fire Depart­ment for 50 years, 37 of them as chief.

The recep­tion, held Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 23, at the First United Methodist Church, was also attended by mem­bers of the Mount Gilead Fire Depart­ment, Elm Val­ley Depart­ment, Big Wal­nut Dept, the fire chief from the Brian Fire Depart­ment; EMS Squads 1, 2 and three and EMS 9 and the Card­ing­ton Fire Department.

Dur­ing the recep­tion, a cer­tifi­cate of recog­ni­tion was pre­sented to Ullom by Jef­frey A. Leam­ing from the State Fire Marshal’s office, Columbus.

Voic­ing what was the com­mon com­ment by those attend­ing were Gary and Pat McAvoy who said “Thank you for your ser­vice. He’s been a good one.”

Sherry Gra­ham, a mem­ber of Card­ing­ton vil­lage coun­cil said, “I’m going to miss him at council.”

Dick and Mar­i­lyn Short said “He’s done a good job, very dedicated.”

Cathy Honaker said Jim was “always inter­est­ing, never bor­ing,” an opin­ion shared by Mark Math­ews, a cap­tain with the depart­ment who has been a mem­ber for 31 years.

Clay­ton Bran­dum, who has sev­eral grand­sons on the depart­ment said “He’s done a good job.”

Bob Math­ews, who has owned and man­aged Math­ews Ser­vice Sta­tion since 1959, employed Ullom when he was 14 years old. “He’s been a long time employee, very faith­ful,” said Math­ews. “He was the most ded­i­cated employee I ever had. I never had to worry about the place when he was there.” Refer­ring to his years with the fire depart­ment, Math­ews said of Ullom, “He put a lot of time in as fire chief, more than peo­ple real­ize. He also has a good wife. Jim was very ded­i­cated to the job, he likes peo­ple, and that’s why he is good at the station.”

Dur­ing a pri­vate din­ner served fol­low­ing the recep­tion, Ullom was pre­sented a plaque on which were placed an axe, a fire hel­met, shield with his badge num­ber 201 and the years of service.

Also hon­ored were Floyd Mor­ris who retired after 45 years of ser­vice and John Cardiff who served 24 years with the depart­ment. They were each pre­sented an award of recognition.

Com­ment­ing on the hon­ors, Ullom said “It meant a lot to me — a heart felt thanks to all who came.”

Host­ing the recep­tion were his wife, Vicki Ullom and daugh­ter, Shelly Benson.

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Feb 27 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.