The Southern California Chapter – a.k.a. as the Crown Firecoach Enthusiasts – hosted one of our largest and most successful Winter Meets ever in San Bernardino in mid-February. The huge Saturday muster, which featured a big display of Crown Firecoach fire apparatus and the FDNY Super Pumper Tender, filled the downtown core all day Saturday. The program included tours of the Los Angeles Fire Department shops, the LAFD’s Old Plaza Firehouse museum and an authentic wildland fire camp dinner amid a special display of highly-specialized forestry firefighting equipment.

The Mid-Jersey Chapter hosted the 1997 Summer Convention & Muster in Toms River, N.J. in the latter part of June. One of the tours at this meet took us to the Lakehurst Naval Air Station, where the German dirigible Hindenburg exploded and burned in 1937. One of the rigs on hand actually responded to this historic disaster.

The SPAAMFAA website was now up and running. The North Texas Chapter manned a SPAAMFAA information booth and display at the 1997 International Association of Fire Chiefs IAFC Convention in Dallas. Three new chapters were born this year – Phoenix AZ, Delmarva and the Memphis Mid-South Chapter. And in a bit of good news, a wheelchair-bound Dick Horstmann attended the Western Massachusetts Muster at Hardwick, Mass. in August.