Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com:
Charles Goodwin knew he was returning to Aurora to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Aurora Regional Fire Museum he helped start, but the 95-year-old retired captain, who joined the fire department in 1957 and was the museum’s first curator, had no idea that part of the celebration included a ceremony renaming a room after him and his late wife Georgia.
Museum Executive Director Brian Failing announced a number of upcoming projects in honor of the museum’s 50th anniversary that included restoring the 1942 LaFrance fire engine to working condition and displaying it in the area where this ceremony was taking place. Other exhibits opening this year include a history of the building and the architect who designed it and a full encompass of the story of the Aurora Fire Department.
From the minute he entered the museum Wednesday morning, the still-spry nonegenarin was greeted by generations of firefighters, former chiefs, many community leaders, and his friends from the decades spent living and working in Aurora.
In 1966 Fire Chief Erwin Bauman asked Goodwin to start researching and archiving the history of the department so it would not be lost. Goodwin said his wife Georgia, who passed away eight years ago to the day of this ceremony, spent lots of time over at the library, sitting in a dark room reading microfilm from all the newspapers since 1836.
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