Retired Firefighter Publishes First Book

Doug McCourt started reading literature during long hours at the Melrose fire station between calls and soon after, the writing started.

McCourt was a Melrose firefighter for 18 years, and now he has self-published a collection of stories in a memoir called Notes from the Firehouse.

Now a resident of Lynnfield, McCourt grew up in Medford, where his father was the captain of ladder one. McCourt said he dedicated the book in the memory of his father, Edward McCourt.

"He was always trying to get me to take the test," to become a firefighter, McCourt said in an interview.

His brother David McCourt is also a Medford firefighter—he has the same job his father had as captain of Medford ladder one.

"He's got the same badge number. That was his tribute; this is mine," McCourt explained.

A lot of the tales in McCourt's "Notes from the Firehouse," the title he coined after the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground, can be somewhat grim.

"You don't realize how many bad things are happening," McCourt said. "It's these crazy situations. People giving birth in the kitchen, people getting their hands stuck in a snowblower..."

Sometimes the death and destruction can be so graphic, it stays with the firefighters.

"I experienced a young man who set himself on fire," McCourt said. "I went home that night, I was a wreck. I remember my father, sometimes he wouldn't come out of his room for days."

There are humorous situations, too, among the diverse experiences of a veteran firefighter, all of which enrich McCourt's book.

In one chapter called "Batman," McCourt tells the story of going on a call that led to some clumsy firefighters chasing a bat in a bedroom. 

"It's a great job, a different job," McCourt said. "There's so much more, so many more stories to be told."

After seven years spent writing and revising the memoir with the help of his son, who is a college professor in Florida, McCourt said he finished the job out of a sense of duty.

"It's a tribute to all the fellows I worked with, so it won't be forgotten, that's what got me to finish it," McCourt said.