Rockdale’s First Volunteer Firefighters Were Monastery Monks

Cistercian monks at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit used an old firetruck not just as a way to put out wildfires but also to warm up to the community.

Rockdale County citizens calling the volunteer fire department in the 1950s and ’60s would’ve been treated to quite the site. When fires arose, they would’ve been met by an old-fashioned firetruck overloaded with monks in habits and firefighting gear. That’s right. Rockdale County’s first volunteer firefighters were all men of the cloth from the Monastery of the Holy Spirit (MoHS), the only sanctuary of cloistered monks in the State of Georgia. 

“In the beginning most people around here didn’t know much about Catholics, and they were especially leery of monks,” Father Anthony Delisi told The Rockdale News in 2014. Fr. Anthony was a regular on the Monastery’s firefighting team. “We saw it as a way to make inroads with the local residents.” 

In 1948, Fr. Anthony joined the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, a centuries-old order of Cistercian monks who take a Vow of Stability, a promise to stay cloistered at their church except under special circumstances. The monastery was started just four years before on a cool spring day when 20 monks from Kentucky’s Abbey of Gethsemani came to the country in remote Conyers to establish a new order there. The monks were so distrusted when they first arrived in rural and predominantly protestant Georgia, that the County sent out a grand jury to investigate the monastery. “And, of course, the [B]lack community thought we were the KKK because of our whites robes,” said Fr. Anthony in that same article from The Rockdale News. “Nobody was sure what we were up to.”

In the 1950s, while they were building their Abbey Church (which would take 15 years), the Monastery monks also acquired an old firetruck from a now defunct hospital near Oglethorpe University. “They asked us if we wanted it and they [gave] us some hose,” said Dom Augustine in an oral history collected by MoHS in 1983. “And so, I remember Fr. Maurice and I went in to get it, and we had more fun coming home!”

Although the monks had no firefighting experience, they decided to offer their services to the community, which, at the time, consisted mostly of tenant farmers. “That old red, it [had] bars alongside and running boards,” continued Dom Augustine. “Modern firetrucks don’t have that. We got that in shape, and going out to fight these bush fires. You get a lot of people on there. You get so many that you hardly could get up the hill. And that became a scene around these parts.”

Soon the monks were getting called upon regularly. Surprisingly, many found themselves eager to volunteer. “Actually, most all the monks enjoyed it,” Fr. Anthony said. “It was kind of a good distraction for us. Nobody taught us anything. We just jumped on the fire truck and off we went. There were usually about 10 monks hanging all over the place on the truck.”

Fortunately, the monks soon learned basic firefighting techniques like using controlled burns to deprive wildfires of fresh fuel, which is called backfiring. They became so trusted by the community that once they were called out but, upon arrival, didn’t see a fire. When they asked the local resident if there was one, he replied, “No. But if there was a fire, I know you’d put it out.”

These firefighting monks served their community for more than a decade. In 1967, Rockdale County took over fire protection services and these firefighting monks retired their “old red” for good. The firetruck was later sold for scrap, but some rural Rockdale residents still remember when holy men fought bushfires in the countryside. 

During their time as the Rockdale Volunteer Fire Department, no monks were ever hurt. But that didn’t mean they weren’t working hard. “I remember I got so tired at one time I just laid down on the fire lane and said, ‘Come on. Get me,'” recalled Dom Augustine in his oral history with MoHS. “There’s nothing that’ll tire you like fighting a bushfire.”