August Henry Jones, born to parents in Bernardo, didn’t stray far from his home roots. He joined the military and then the Texas National Guard.
Most people know him as the local telephone repairman. Calls to his home at all hours with people with phone problems were handled sometimes at that min- ute. He was the first to install the new dial telephone in the Seaholm house in Eagle Lake.
He is also known but most- ly forgotten, by another first - a founding Bernardo Volunteer Fire Department member.
Standing beside the new building of the Bernardo Volunteer Fire Department, he is the lone survivor of the founders of the Bernardo Volunteer Fire Department. He isn’t sure exactly when the fire department was orga nized, but he is sure it started two years before the first fundraiser was in 1973.
August, known as Bear, re- members their first real fire truck was a converted army truck from Fort Wallace Army Base with a 55-gallon water tank.
After that, an old used fire truck was put into service. The firefighting equipment was parked beside the Bernardo Store, formerly H&S Grocery and Feed Store.
Before all the modern fire equipment to fight fires, brooms, garden rakes and wet grass sacks were used to put a stop to any fires. To get to the fire, a phone call sent the firefighters beating a path to the fire in their personal vehicles.
August remembers a time when he hooked up his pickup truck to a butane tank at a mobile home fire and pulled it into the pasture to keep it from exploding.
August Henry Jones stands alone where once the other founders, namely, George Sebesta, A.J. Hill, Jerome Wicke, Louis Sodalak, Manual Henneke, Otto Richter and himself fought the line of fire in what was called Bernardo Prairie.
