Network News
November 2025
Another one in the bag!
This year’s Seminar held at the Hall of Flame Museum of Firefighting in Phoenix, Arizona was a huge success! Over 60 people were in attendance at this 34th Annual Fire Museum Seminar, and if you weren’t there, you missed a great event.
Wow! What a beautiful exhibition of fire apparatus, in such a great facility! Thank you, Chuck Montgomery, Dawn Cullen, Dan Baker and everyone else at the HoF for your hospitality!
Seminar attendees started out with many of us riding in the Veteran’s Day parade on Tuesday and ended with a delicious dinner at the Hall of Flame on Thursday evening, with various presentations and tours of a number of the Phoenix Fire Department’s facilities in between.
Tim Kovacs, of the Phoenix FD, gave us an interesting look into the past of the Historic PFD Station 8 that is now a museum in its own right. Thanks, Tim for being such a gracious host!
During our Annual Members meeting, Gene Brown, Jim Stillman, and Tom McDonald were all reelected to our Board of Directors for another three-year term, and it was reported that the Board had reelected me as President, Jim Stillman as Vice President, and Bob Vallero as our Secretary/Treasurer for another one-year term. I also reminded FMN Members that openings on our Board DO happen (some of us are getting a little old, ya know…) and encouraged anyone interested in becoming a Member of the Board in the future, to let us know. I also asked for articles and photos of your museums for our website SHOWCASE page. We would gladly showcase YOUR museum for our website visitors to see!
A number of topics were presented throughout the Seminar, and one of the keynote speakers on Wednesday afternoon was Michael Bendit of ArtTech Alliance, who gave a presentation on how all of our museums can benefit from AI (Artificial Intelligence), without costing an arm and a leg. His presentation touched on readily available AI engines (software) that can do everything from making beautiful animated videos, to “text-to-speech” narrations of your existing displays. And trust me, you don’t have to be a computer geek to use most of that software!
Michael’s company hopes, in the near future, to be offering a heavily discounted program for FMN members called “Audio Docent,” which uses AI to give on-site tours of your museums via your visitor’s cell phones. More to come on that later.
Networking is important to us, and the FMN hosted Network Nights on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights, with the LA County Fire Museum hosting on our final night. I got to sit-in on a number of group networking sessions (OK, some were more along the lines of “BS sessions,” but you get the idea…) A good gathering of people, talking about past Seminars, future Seminars, the pros and cons of various ideas for displays and signage, other upcoming events (IFBA in Tennessee in August, SPAAMFAA in San Antonio in March), just about anything and everything was thrown out there to talk about! If you weren’t there, don’t worry, we talked about you. (Ha!)
Next year’s Fire Museum Seminar will be held at the Mansfield Fire Museum in Mansfield, Ohio. Details, including host hotel, dates, and schedule will be announced in our Monthly Network News newsletter as soon as the information becomes available. Tentatively, they’re looking at third week of August (before the COLD weather hits, which is important to us from Texas…) Vern Bickers and John Harsh, with the Mansfield museum have promised us a Seminar that is “not-to-be-missed,” so start making plans early!
For an added “enticement” for you to attend the 2026 Seminar, the FMN Board of Directors also announced that FOUR $500 grants will be available and will include FREE SEMINAR REGISTRATION for the grant recipients! We REALLY want to see you there in Ohio next year!
Stay safe, and I hope to see y’all soon!
Bob Heckman
President, Fire Museum Network
On Wednesday morning, Colin Prince, of the Auckland Fire Brigade Museum, and last year’s Educational Grant recipient, announced this year’s $500 grants were awarded to Carl Wedige of the San Antonio Fire Museum, and Jeff Buchheit of the Fire Museum of Maryland. Congratulations to both of them! Pictured from l to r, President Bob Heckman, Jeff Buchheit, Carl Wedige and Colin Prince.
Meet the Board
Your Network is governed by a board of nine volunteers, each elected for a three-year term. You can contact them through the email contact form on the website, or directly at their email addresses. We are always looking for new enthusiastic volunteers. As you can see we come from all levels of experience and backgrounds.
Bob Heckman, Texas president@firemuseumnetwork.org
Tom McDonald, Texas TMcfire@aol.com
Bill Hall, Ohio bhallcfd@gmail.com
Bob Vallero, Colorado, denverfireman@hotmail.com
Don Dodd, California fireplug25@sbcglobal.net
Frank Taff, Indiana fmtaff@gmail.com
Jim Stillman, Colorado jamesfstillman@gmail.com
Gene Brown, Oklahoma, genebrownfire@gmail.com
Verne Bickers, Ohio, firefighter_2515@yahoo.com