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LEWISTOWN -- Robert Corkins keeps an old fire helmet in his home that reaches back almost to the beginning of Henderson Fire Co.
It belonged to his great-great-grandfather and, by Corkins' estimate, dates to the company's first decade. Nearby is a full Class A dress uniform from roughly the 1960s, part of a collection that has grown large enough that most of Henderson's surviving memorabilia now resides under his roof.
For Corkins, that is where the work of remembering has led.
Former Henderson members will gather again Oct. 4 from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Scooter Car Pavilion at Kish Park for the company's second reunion since 2023. The gathering is intended for former members, many of whom haven't worn a Henderson uniform in more than three decades.
The fire company ceased operating independently in 1994 when it merged with Fame Fire Co. to form United Fire and Rescue. Corkins said Henderson lacked manpower by then. Many of its members were older, while Fame had more available firefighters.
The merger solved one problem. Time created another.
As years passed, Corkins said, fewer people remained who made preserving Henderson's history their particular concern. Many former Henderson members eventually left United, and the old company's identity faded into the larger organization.
Corkins noticed.
His father had belonged to Henderson. His family's connection to local fire protection reaches back generations. Corkins himself never served as a firefighter, though he spent four years working as a fire-scene photographer. Around 2018, while researching his family history and learning more about his great-great-grandfather, he began collecting and preserving Henderson material.
"My dad was a member," Corkins said. "This history needs to be preserved."
The work kept growing. So did the collection. Eventually Corkins decided one person couldn't carry it alone, which led to an effort to organize the Henderson "Hose" Hook and Ladder Historical Society.
That effort continues, though it suffered a setback recently when one of its major supporters died.
"We were doing good until probably a month or so ago," Corkins said. "One of our big supporters passed away. And that really threw a wrench in the works, but we're still working at it."
For now, Corkins stores most of the collection at home and takes pieces into the community for events such as National Night Out and Goose Day.
Corkins said two sections of old Henderson leather fire hose are believed to be in the Smithsonian in Washington. A third section once remained with the company, he said, but disappeared around the time the old firehouse was demolished in 1986.
The missing hose is one of those loose ends that accumulate when an organization outlives its building, its equipment scatters, and the people who remember where everything went grow older.
The reunion is partly an answer to that passage of time.
Corkins said the first reunion, held in 2023, attracted what he estimated was about 90% of Henderson's living members. Organizers skipped 2024 and 2025, making this year's gathering technically the second reunion. Corkins hopes they can continue holding them.
What brings the old members back is difficult to reduce to one reason. When Corkins was asked what Henderson still means to them, he first paused. Then he returned to something the company valued for generations: pride.
Henderson members wanted to look like Henderson members.
When the company marched in a parade, Corkins said, the trucks were clean and the firefighters dressed formally. Even near the end, members wore dress shirts, dress pants, dress shoes and dress caps.
"Henderson always seemed to pride themselves on being the most presentable," Corkins said.
That attention to appearance was a small thing with a larger meaning. The uniform marked membership. The company expected its people to represent it a certain way, and decades later Corkins still remembers the standard well enough to describe it piece by piece.
At the reunions, the conversation moves backward. Former members talk about fires they fought and things that happened around the station. The details may vary, but the subject remains familiar: people, calls, and days when Henderson was still an operating fire company.
That pool of memories is getting smaller. Corkins said many surviving members are now advanced in age, the same generation that already made up much of Henderson's roster before the 1994 merger.
The historical society, the collection, and the reunion all meet at that point.
Corkins can preserve a uniform. He can keep an old helmet safe. He can take Henderson artifacts to public events. What can't be stored are the stories carried by the people who wore the uniforms, rode the apparatus and spent their time inside the firehouse.
On Oct. 4, some of them will sit together again at Kish Park and remember.
For Corkins, getting them together is another way of keeping Henderson's history from disappearing with them.