As a farmer, Travis Rowland plants crops. As a Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory firefighter for the last three decades, Lt. Rowland has planted knowledge in the minds of the other firefighters.
“That’s one of those things that Lt. Rowland did very well, is pass on the information that he knows. He wasn’t afraid to say, ‘I don’t know.’ He would go look up something if he needed to and come back to you, and he was also very good at handing down the knowledge that he knew to other people, which made him a great leader for our fire department, so we are definitely going to miss him,” Fire Chief Joel Shilling said at Rowland’s retirement party Friday afternoon at Station #15.

    Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory Lt. Travis Rowland (L) is pictured with his wife, Jenny (R), during his retirement party Friday. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union
  

Rowland got into the fire service by going with his dad when he was a volunteer at the Claypool Fire Department.
“I started going with him to different stuff, meetings, trainings and then went to school. When I came back from school, they had my stuff ready for me basically and said, ‘Here’s your stuff, get your certifications, it starts next week,'” he recalled.
He was a volunteer with Claypool from 1992-93, and with Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory 1994-96. In July 1996, he was hired on full time at Warsaw and was promoted to lieutenant in 2008.
“Over the years, it’s just something that kind of intrigued me and it ended up being a pretty good career over the last 28 years, and it was just neat,” Rowland said.
He decided to retire because “it’s just time, and I got an opportunity to do what I’ve been doing on my side jobs with the farm. And I got to the age of retirement that I could actually draw, and it’s just time.”
He plans to spend more time with family and do other things like his “expensive” hobbies of hunting and archery.

    Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory Chief Joel Shilling (L) presents Lt. Travis Rowland (R) with his retirement axe at Rowland’s retirement party. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union
  

He and Jenny have been married nine years as of last week. She said being a firefighter’s wife is “occasionally rather difficult because we have to schedule everything around every shift day, so that’s been a little bit challenging. So it’ll be really nice to have our weekends back, our holidays back and not have to worry about it.”
While they don’t share all the same hobbies, he said they both have golf clubs now and are going to try to start doing something like that together.
Rowland’s oldest daughter, Renee, and her husband, Ethan House, have three children - Waylon, Riley and Ryann. Jenny’s daughter, Sadie, 20, is a college student, and her other daughter, Lacie, just finished high school and earned her EMT certificate this week.
He said it would be nice to spend more time with the grandchildren, but they live in South Dakota so it’s a big trip to do that.
“But (retirement) will be a big change of not working. I’ve been working two jobs for 28 years. So it’ll be a little bit different only having one job, and being able to spend some more time at home, especially in evenings, weekends. That will be a big difference,” Rowland said.
Farming is a “different thing” for him. “You plant a crop in the spring, you tend to it in the summer, harvest in the fall. I work for a gentleman that’s doing this. It gives you satisfaction and you can drive around all day long, cross the fields and it’s therapy almost for me,” he stated.
Firefighters often will say that the service is a brotherhood, and that’s one of the things Rowland will miss about it.

    Retired firefighter Jon Swoverland (L) presents Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory Lt. Travis Rowland (R) with his retirement clock Friday. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union
  

“Sitting around the table after dinner and shooting each other back and forth, you know, and just picking on each other and then also solving the world’s problems just sitting around the kitchen table,” he said. “It is a brotherhood. The guys I have worked with over the years, the ones that retired before me that basically kind of brought me up through, and now I’m on the reverse side of that and they’re coming up underneath me. It’s pretty neat.”
Rowland said he hopes that the younger guys have listened to some of the things he’s told them.
“It’s been a really good career. It’s going to be missed. It’ll be missed. The biggest part of it will be missing the guys,” he concluded.
It’s a tradition that the shift gets the retiring firefighter a gift. Battalion Chief Rob Barker, the shift and a few others presented Rowland with a gun and an engraved gun rack. Retired firefighter Jon Swoverland presented Rowland with the engraved clock.
Barker said he’s known Rowland basically his entire fire service career, which is almost 30 years.
“We’ve worked together here at Warsaw for 22,” Barker said. “He’s a ball of fire. He’s always trying to keep up with the kids and always does such a great job doing it. We’re going to miss him a lot, that’s for sure. He’s always working with the new kids, teaching them. Super mechanically inclined. He can fix about anything around here, so that’s a pretty big deal, too.”
He said Rowland probably taught him a lot of small engine repairs.
“I think he taught me teamwork really well. How to do a job together, just make sure we’ve got it done right,” Barker stated.
Swoverland said he’s known Rowland since Rowland came on his shift when he started 30 years ago.
“I would have been, maybe a lieutenant at the time,” Swoverland said. “I would have been on station 1. He started on station 1, so that would have been 30 years ago.”
He said Rowland was “young” and “eager.” They worked together at least 10 years. “They switched around so much back then that it was hard to keep up with everybody. He may have been on my shift at the other station and I wouldn’t see him that often,” Swoverland said.
He said he knew Rowland would be around for a while because “it was in his blood.”

    Pictured is Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory Lt. Travis Rowland’s retirement cake. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union
  

Firefighter Derek Shilling has worked with Rowland off and on for 20 years.
“He’s just a great, dependable guy. Very detail-oriented,” he said. “But just a dependable person.”
He said Rowland has always taken the new guys under his wing and taught them stuff like taking something apart and putting it back together.
In a brief ceremony, Fire Chief Joel Shilling said, “In his 30 years of service here at Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory ... Travis has done many, many things for the department, long before I was here and most of the department, so we thank Travis for that. A lot of people take a lot of things that Travis did for granted, whether it was something that needed fixed or something that just wasn’t working right that Travis would investigate and use his nit-pickiness to make sure things happen and it was how he wanted it done. We’re going to miss Travis and we thank him for his service.”
Rowland said, “I’m not much for giving speeches, but thank you for everybody coming tonight, supporting me. It’ll be different.” After an emotional pause, he continued, “You guys coming up, you’ve got a great future ahead of you, a bunch of great leaders. You’ve got the support of the chief, give him the support. And carry on! So thank you.”
Later, Chief Shilling said Rowland has been a huge asset to the department, whether it was leading the senior or newer members. “He has been very instrumental in just helping them out, training them if they needed to. He’s very meticulous, so when he works on things and he took care and was in charge of all of our equipment, all of our hoses, he made sure that all of that stuff got tested annually like it’s supposed to, that everything was in working order.”