A 91-year-old man has donated $500,000 to a tiny rural volunteer fire department in Missouri in an act of generosity that will transform the fortunes of the struggling organization, whose members have been using equipment from the 1980s.
Sam Sloan, a resident of Calhoun, Missouri, donated the lump sum to the struggling department, KMBC first reported.
“I’m making a donation to the fire department. I’ve been planning to for several years,” Sloan said to KMBC. “It’s half a million dollars and a half a million dollars is a pretty good donation.”
The Calhoun fire department, which serves the town’s 500 residents, has long struggled with a small budget.
Due to financial constraints, the volunteer department has been using gear from the 1980s. The department is forced to regularly repair older fire trucks, with at least three trucks no longer working.
Last March, the department’s finances were particularly bleak. The department had only $169 in their bank account, having spent the majority of their $4,800 annual budget on repairs, the Washington Post reported.
“It was pretty discouraging – we’d already been paying for stuff out of our own pockets to keep things going,” said the fire chief, Mark Hardin, to the Post.
But Hardin’s despair quickly dissipated when Sloan told Hardin of his plans to donate to the department over breakfast.
Sloan, who has lived in Calhoun since the 1960s, told the Post that he made his fortune from his cattle business. Over the years, he saved his money and now plans to invest it into the community.
“I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and I knew at this point in my life, I could help,” said Sloan to the Post. “It’s important to have a good fire department, especially with all the grass we have around here.”
In line with Sloan’s wishes, Hardin plans to use the money to buy new protective equipment for the firefighters as well as a new tanker pumper and at least two used fire trucks.
The Calhoun fire department plans to pass on their old equipment to other rural fire departments that are struggling, KMBC reported.
Sloan also asked that the fire department host a community barbecue “so [firefighters] can show off their new uniforms”, Hardin told the Post.
Sloan also requested that, in the future, a firetruck ride in front of his hearse on the way to his funeral, though Hardin is hopeful that request won’t be granted for a long, long time.
“We had a helmet made for Sam, appointing him as honorary fire chief,” Hardin said to the Post. “I hope he’ll be getting a whole lot of wear out of it.”
As for Sloan, he remains humble about his outstanding contributions.
“I’m getting a lot of credit for it, but I don’t know how to fix one of them things. But I know how to make a dollar and there’s a difference there,” Sloan said to KMBC.
