The Duncombe couple officially retired from the Duncombe Volunteer Fire Department last week after a combined 62 years of service, leaving a lasting legacy in the rural eastern Webster County town.

Eric Klein’s introduction to firefighting was an abrupt one — he was outside doing yard work when his brother-in-law, who was the Duncombe fire chief at the time, came by and dragged him to a fire he needed more hands for.

That was 1987. Over the years, Eric Klein has worn many different hats for the DVFD. He’s been everything from a firefighter to emergency medical technician, from secretary treasurer to captain to assistant chief to chief.

Joline Klein joined the DVFD in 1995, and it was Eric’s brother-in-law who brought her in as well. She had been giving him a hard time for not having any women volunteer.

-Messenger file photo
Eric Klein, of Duncombe, tries to see if his helmet will fit on his wife, Joline Klein, at the Duncombe Fire Station in 2019. Eric joined the Duncombe Volunteer Fire Department in 1987, and Joline joined in 1996. The couple recently retired from service.

“I always give the guys heck about how old they were and how they didn’t have any women in the department,” Joline Klein said. “Ten or 15 minutes later, I had my own bunker gear.”

She was the first female volunteer at the department, but since then it has seen a few female firefighters and EMTs. She also served as a secretary treasurer, but most recently served as the emergency medical services director.

“I also did fire scene support a lot,” she said. “I was never actually a firefighter, but any fire call that they had, I went on just to make sure if anybody needed something or whatever, I was there to fill that role.”

Though they had known each other for the majority of their lives, it was their time at the fire department that brought the Kleins together.

In the years that the Kleins volunteered, they responded to somewhere between 300 and 400 fire calls, Eric Klein estimated.

Eventually, their kids started to get involved.

“All three of our sons became firefighters,” Eric Klein said.

The couple’s oldest son, Adam and his wife, Miranda, have volunteered for the DVFD. Their two youngest sons, Kasey and Kyle, are firefighters with the Fort Dodge Fire Department and also both volunteer for Duncombe — Kasey as a captain and Kyle as the new EMS director. And their daughter Amanda’s husband, Andy, is a firefighter with the Webster City Fire Department and is also the acting assistant fire chief for Duncombe.

“It was a family affair,” Joline Klein said. “It’s bred into the family. Any time the pagers go off, everybody has their role and knows what they’re doing.”

The family feeling extends well beyond the Klein family, however. Spending so much time together, the volunteers begin to feel like family.

“There was always a camaraderie among everybody in the fire department,” Eric Klein said.

Eric and Joline decided recently that it was time to hang up their helmet and medic bag.

“After all these years, we’ve seen a lot of firefighters that have stayed on past their time, and we just wanted to go out on a good note,” Joline Klein said.

“We’re both getting older, so it just seemed like a good time for both of us,” Eric Klein added. “We raised our kids and they’ve taken over the department and we’re leaving it in a good place. It has kind of been one of our dreams, to step back and let our kids take over.”

The Kleins plan on spending their newfound extra time with their grandkids — and they’re not going to miss those middle-of-the-night pages for fire or medical calls.

“We’ll still hear the youngest son running through the house trying to find stuff to get out the door,” Joline Klein said.

Over three decades of fire and medical calls can start to blend together, but Eric Klein has something he’ll always remember.

“Anytime you could help someone from Duncombe,” he said. “Being from here, everyone was somebody’s son, daughter, grandma, grandpa, it always felt good.”

He remembers walking onto a scene and noticing people seem more at ease, knowing they were in good hands with the DVFD.

“I think one of my times is when we’ve gone and done ice-water rescue with Lehigh, or when we went and took the ATVs through Brushy Creek just to get familiar with the locations,” Joline Klein said.

According to the National Fire Protection Association, the average volunteer firefighter serves 10 years.

“These two have dedicated so much more of their lives to the people of Duncombe, it’s unreal,” said DVFD Chief Todd Bingham. “As we prepare to fill the very large shoes they leave open, everyone at DVFD wishes them the best of luck and relaxation in retirement. We hope to keep seeing them around, and since they will leave us with three of their own, I’m sure we will. They will truly be missed by many.”

When the Kleins announced their retirement from the department, they received an outpouring of love and support and gratitude from the Duncombe and Webster County communities.

“We were very humbled by all the people that reached out to us,” Eric Klein said.

In a time where rural volunteer fire departments are struggling to find volunteers, the Kleins are proud to have given a lifetime of service to their community, and proud to have raised their family to do the same.

“It’s really hard to get people out there who want to dedicate their time to something like that, and it takes a special person to do volunteer service,” Joline Klein said.