Hugh (Bud) Cook represents a dedicated breed.

The 80-year-old Northport man just began his 58th year as a member of the Leelanau Township Fire Department. A captain on the squad since 1974, Cook is often the first person on the scene when his department is toned out from the county dispatch center.

Leelanau Township firefighter Bud Cook has been a firefighter since he was 23-years-old. He’s pictured in the office of his son, fire chief Hugh Cook.“Depending on the time of the call … I go directly to the scene with my personal vehicle,” said Cook, father of Fire Chief Hugh Cook Jr. Although he purposely removes himself from the physically demanding part of firefighting, Cook offers decades of experience to those on the frontlines.

“When I get there, I radio the trucks coming to the scene to let them know how they should park. I usually do traffic control. I’m not about to be climbing ladders and that stuff.”

Before modern-day emergency communications, the chief would receive a call for help and his wife would contact all department members by phone. When he was a boy, it was past firefighter Orvall Kellogg’s wife, Pearl, who made the calls.

Cook was 23-years-old and working at a farm service store in the village when Chief Kellogg asked him to join the then all-volunteer department.

There was no arm-twisting needed, as Cook had firefighting in his blood. His father, Clarence Cook, was a longtime member of the department. And it wasn’t unusual for youth in the community to follow the department’s Model A truck to the scene when a call came in.

“All the young guys like myself were begging to get on the department,” Cook said.

That enthusiasm to enlist stands in sharp contrast to recent times when volunteers have been in short supply. In fact, there are no all-volunteer departments operating in Leelanau County today.
Training was important in those days, but not nearly as time-consuming as the standards in place now.

“Wally Gannon would come up from Muskegon and hold classes,” Cook remembered. “We’d have drills and hose tests.”

More than a half century after he became a firefighter, certain events stay with him today.

One of his first calls was to the home of an American Indian which was fully engulfed in flames by the time trucks arrived. Cook was responsible for retrieving the charred remains of a burn victim, and waiting for Martinson’s Funeral Home to take the body.

“That smell never leaves you,” Cook said.

The former dump, near the Leelanau Township Cemetery in Northport, was a frequent destination for firefighters prior to the site’s closure in the early 1970s. Something was always burning there.

“What a mess that was. There were skunks, garbage and rats,” he said. “When I got home, I had to take my clothes off outside because I smelled so bad.”

His promotion to the rank of captain in 1974 came with additional responsibilities, including equipment maintenance. Cook was a member of a committee which recommended construction of the former firehall on Third Street. He, Elden Dame and Kellogg visited different stations all over Michigan before getting the final plans on paper.

“When we started building, people said, ‘What are you going to do with all that space?’,” Cook explained. “We outgrew that station in 10 years.”