Tribute to firefighters

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Curator Serena Sutliff (right) talks with Bill Corrigan as he hangs an early volunteer firefighter leather helmet for an exhibit on fire departments at the Westchester Township History Museum in Chesterton, Ind. | Stephanie Dowell~Sun-Times Media

Updated: March 24, 2012 8:45AM

Serena Sutliff has learned a lot putting together her first fully curated exhibit for the Westchester Township History Museum.

For one thing, the Dyer native now living in Valparaiso said putting together the exhibit, on the fire departments of Westchester Township, took a lot more time than she expected.

“I hope everyone understands this has been a learning experience for me,” she said.

The exhibit, which opened Feb. 18, continues through April 29 at the museum, 700 Porter Ave. The month of May will bring a display of the mothers of the township, including a slide show of local mothers and pictures of the moms of the Westchester Public Library, since the museum falls under the library’s jurisdiction.

The exhibit on the fire departments includes memorabilia from the Burns Harbor, Chesterton and Porter departments. Dune Acres items also are on display, though that community no longer has its own fire department.

The exhibit starts with the April 26, 1902 Chesterton fire, which destroyed 11 downtown businesses, all in wood buildings. No one was killed, and a brick building was spared. The cause of the fire, suspected to be arson, was never determined.

“It brought about a lot of changes in Chesterton,” Sutliff said, adding all new downtown buildings had to be brick and, two months later, the town’s fire department was established, a shift from the bucket brigades the town had relied on.

Sutliff, 34, graduated from Lake Central High School in 1996. She went to Concordia University in Austin, Texas, for a degree in secondary education and taught middle and high school English and history for about seven years. She then did graduate work in museum studies at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.

Her family had moved by then to Valparaiso and she was looking for a summer internship in the area. She found one at the museum in 2010 and volunteered here after she graduated in May, then learned long-time curator Jane Walsh Brown planned to retire at the end of the year.

She started working at the museum in October, officially taking over as curator in January.

“It worked out very well for me,” she said.