Station 5 on Wheeling Island became a personal playground for a child growing up on North Penn Street. He loved the trucks, the helmets, and especially the gold pole that transported firefighters from their sleeping quarters to the frontlines of firefighting.
Cliff Sligar had caught the bug, and the men assigned to Station 5 only enhanced it.
“Firefighting absolutely gets into your blood,” Larry Helms, the current fire chief, said. “It’s really kind of hard to explain, and I know Cliff was the same as I was when he was young. But both got bitten by the community service bug at a very young age. Cliff used to tell the stories about chasing down fire trucks when he was in grade school, and he would tell us how he used to hang out with the crews at the fire station.
“What he used to say that was most interesting to him was that those guys at the station who worked together were family, and that’s something he said he always appreciated,” he said. “Obviously, Cliff was interested in becoming a firefighter from the time he was very young, but I think that sense of family was just as big for him when he was a kid, and it stuck with him throughout his adult life. That’s why I think he continued to show up at fire scenes. For him, it was a family thing.”
Special Vision
During his 24 years as the chief of the Wheeling Fire Department, Cliff Sligar was appointed to a national committee to assist with the development of a state-of-art breathing apparatus for firefighters that proved to save lives.
From that point, Chief Sligar was just getting started.
Not only did he develop and implement the city’s EMT service but also the city’s 911 system. Sligar consulted with fire departments throughout the country on a daily basis to learn new techniques, and that included the first-responder agency in New York City.
“If you look at the uniform patch for the NYC fire department and the Wheeling department,” Helms said, “they are very similar, and that’s because Cliff designed it.”
Cliff Sligar retired as Wheeling’s fire chief in 1995 and almost immediately returned to community service when he accepted a position in Belmont County to develop its 911 system. Finally, he retired in 2017.
“Cliff had a very special passion for being a firefighter. That was the biggest thing,” Helms said. “Secondly, Cliff was a visionary when it came to fire service, in my opinion. He was one of those types of people who could envision things happening in the future, and he used that foresight to get our department ready.,
“He was very instrumental with implementing the paramedic service here in Wheeling because he saw that need for immediate medical care here,” he said. “And even after his retirement, he stayed close to us to continue to offer that ability, and that allowed him to help Steve (Johnston) and me in our roles as chiefs of the Wheeling Fire Department. And trust me; when I needed him, he was only a phone call away.”
Big Blazes in an Aging Town
There was a time in the history of downtown Wheeling when the Wharf Garage was one of a few options for parking for those wishing to shop along Main and Market streets, but over the past 40 years that has changed because of the demolitions of delipidated buildings and because of accidental fires that consumed structure along both streets.
One of the most memorable fires in Chief Cliff’s career involved the destruction of the Bing’s Furniture on the corner of 12th and Main streets. The blaze burned for hours, and when it was finally under control, only the skeleton of the fully stocked brick building remained.
“Bing’s was a bad one for sure, but there were some other pretty major fires in downtown Wheeling during his years as chief, and some of those fires erased a lot of memories for the people of Wheeling. I think that’s why he would try so hard to save what he could,” Helms recalled. “Even after he retired, he continued to show up on scenes because he just wanted to offer whatever he could to me and Steve because of how long he served as chief.
“One thing about both Cliff and Steve is that they never have come to me to say that I was going about a fire scene the wrong way, and I think there’s a couple of reasons for that,” he said. “I know Cliff knew that he trained the members of his department the right way, and Steve knew that, too.”
Cliff and his wife, Sherry, were married 52 years, and the couple had two sons. Following his passing on March 17 at the age of 88, the members of the Wheeling Fire Department honored him because once a firefighter, always a firefighter.
“To me, Cliff Sligar will always be the chief of the Wheeling Fire Department because he was the chief that hired me,” Helms said. “Cliff guided me into the direction of paramedic services, and I always appreciated that because he knew I wanted to do what I could to help as many people as I could. He knew being a paramedic in Wheeling was the way I could do that.
“When Cliff retired, I was very happy to see Steve get the position because I knew he would do a good job, but Cliff had away of dealing with personnel and always looking forward. I knew we were going to miss that,” the chief added. “A week before he passed, I called him and Steve on something, and he was always the one who would give me an answer that may or may not work at this time because of political correctness. But he didn’t care. He told me anyway; he always wanted to save more lives.”
