Cliff Kroger celebrating 90th birthday
On
Thursday, July 26, a Bonners Ferry icon will
celebrate his 90th birthday, and everyone in the
community is welcome to attend Cliff Kroger's
surprise party.Cliff was born in his family's house on Hunston Street, Oroville, California, July 26, 1922 , and one of his earliest memories is hearing the alarm that sent firefighters scrambling, including his father, who was Oroville's fire chief when he came into this world.
Growing up in a firefighting family, Cliff's life would mirror his father's in many ways. Like his father and two of his brothers, Cliff as never far from the smell of smoke, serving on fire departments in Oroville, Carson, Nevada, and Cle Ellum, Washington, before joining the Bonners Ferry Fire Department in 1969.
Shortly after he was born, the people of Oroville provided Cliff's father an official car so he wouldn't have to run to the fire hall every time a fire call came in. Even before then, his fellow firefighters razzed him about sleeping in his turnouts, so quickly did he respond.
Generations of Bonners Ferry firefighters razzed Cliff with the very same words; for nearly 30 years, very few ever reached the barn quicker than he did.
In 1950, Cliff married Barbara Kroeger in Carson City, Nevada, and it wasn't long before they were raising their own generation of firefighters.
It wasn't just the smell of smoke that defined his life, either. While serving as a volunteer firefighter, Cliff earned his living with ink in his veins, serving as pressman for several newspapers for most of a century that was marked by change, from the old hand operated presses through linotype. He saw first radio and then television come along to challenge the newspaper as the primary way people got their news.
He hung up his ink-stained apron at the Bonners Ferry Herald in 1985, and became Bonners Ferry's full time fire chief on New Year's Day, 1987, a position he held for a decade until he retired, at age 75, in 1997.
Over the years, Cliff's passion for firefighting infected two daughters, a nephew and two grandchildren, and Cliff did everything he could to share with them his encyclopedic knowledge and experience. His two daughters and two grandchildren are firefighters and/or emergency medical technicians to this day, raising their families to the smell of smoke and service to community.
The smell of smoke didn't let go after his retirement, either. A lifetime member of the Idaho Fire Chief's Association since 1984, he's spent the past several years gathering material and pictures for a history of the Bonners Ferry Department which he's shared with the Boundary County Museum and the Smoke Eaters.
According to his family, Cliff has no idea that a party in his honor is being held on this milestone day, and they're hoping no one spills the beans ... that's why this story isn't in the Herald, which he reads faithfully!
It's being held at 6 p.m. Thursday, July 26, where else but in the Bonners Ferry Fire Hall.
The family asks that no one bring gifts, just your company and your memories. Hamburgers are being provided by the BFFD, buns and beverages by Boundary Volunteer Ambulance, and the birthday cake by Super 1 Foods.