Students design new patch for Meeker Fire & Rescue Dept.

By Doc Watson
Special to the Herald Times
MEEKER | On Feb. 16, a beautiful and unseasonable warm day, there was a short ceremony outside Meeker High School to first recognize Ben Quinn’s art class students and then reward the four students who won a contest to design the new patch for Meeker Fire and Rescue.
“We really needed a new patch because the present one is just so generic,” Fire Chief and EMS Director Terry Skidmore said.
The Fire District asked the high school art department to design a new patch. The assignment went to Quinn’s college level art class, offered through CNCC. It was a challenging assignment because it had to integrate both aspects of the department—fire and rescue—into one patch, but the students met the challenge.
The students produced several nice designs, from which four were chosen as first through fourth place. First place went to Jeniffer Kincher, who not only insightfully integrated fire and rescue into her design, but also several characteristics of life in Meeker: mountains, elk, fishing and even the state flower and seal.
When asked what inspired her ideas for her design, Kincher said, “I looked at the old logo and pulled ideas from there. I also had inspiration from what really defines Meeker: the vibrant colors, hunting and wildlife.”
Significantly, as Quinn was pleased to emphasize, Kincher and some of the other students are actually only freshmen who are taking a college level course. “I saw what they did in middle school; there were openings in this class, and I felt like they could do it,” he said.
As the first place winner, Kincher was awarded a $100 prize from the fire district. Second place went to Brooke Ford ($75), third place to Jacob Pelloni ($50) and fourth place to Jonathan Lopez ($25). The fire district also donated $1,000 to the art department, which otherwise is not strongly funded, as EMS First Lt. Patti Merriam added.
Also present from the fire district were EMT and fire board member Wade Bradfield, EMT Ronda Morgan and driver/firefighter Richard Schwegler.
Chief Skidmore closed the brief ceremony by encouraging the students in his South Carolina accent, “For 10 years I taught in the high school and had a lot of people become firefighters and stayed in their community. So, if anybody is interested in that, come by the fire station and talk to us. It’s fun and rewarding to the community.”