After 30 years of training new firefighters at McHenry County College, Woodstock man retires

In Wes Crain’s 30-year career as an instructor at McHenry County College, he has trained more than 8,000 students to be firefighters, many of whom still work in the county today.

Those close interactions, teaching, molding, supporting and guiding students to become firefighters, as well as seeing their successes in their personal lives, is what Crain said he will miss the most now that he has retired from the college.

When he retired Friday, he was the fire science department chair and an instructor. Crain began his career 36 years ago as a volunteer firefighter for Woodstock Fire Rescue District, the same as his father years before.

In 2020, the lifelong Woodstock resident retired from the Glenview Fire Department after serving there for 25 years.

“Being a firefighter comes down to serving your community and giving back to your community,” he said. “The joy of teaching at MCC, helping new students continue to grow in a career that is dangerous, every day we respond to dangerous calls, it is something special. You have got to take a lot of pride and dedication to be in the fire service. It’s a noble breed to be a part of.”

Crain, 56, who has been married to his high school sweetheart, Laura Crain, for the past 35 years and has three “very successful” grown daughters, is not yet completely retired.

Crain works as a field staff instructor for the Illinois Fire Service Institute out of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

He also works part time as battalion chief at the Spring Grove Fire Protection District, for which Chief Paul Klicker said he is “fortunate.”

“He is a great asset to the fire service,” Klicker said. “Obviously, as an instructor at the college for 30 years, he probably helped shaped the fire service in greater northern Illinois in those last 30 years. It is pretty hard to go into any local fire department and not find someone who has learned from him. I am fortunate to still work with him.”

Larry Kane is the fire academy director at the college and has worked with Crain since 2007. He said Crain “always puts the needs of the program before himself.”

“If there was 25 hours in a day, he devoted all 25 to furthering that program,” Kane said. “His retiring is a great loss to the program and a great loss to the county.”

In teaching students, Crain said he not only worked to help start them off with the proper training and degrees in the fire service career, but he looked at their lives 20 or 30 years down the road and into retirement. He wanted to be sure they were on the right track to accomplish anything they wanted. He said he was always honest with his students and hoped to help make “smooth transitions” in their education and in their lives.

Leaving the students and missing these connections Crain said “is the toughest thing.”

Teaching fire science has changed in recent years because products in homes and businesses today, such as more plastics and synthetics, burn hotter and bigger. Decades ago structures consisted of real woods and cottons, he said.

“Things are more flammable today,” he said.

It is his program, which is nationally recognized by the National Fire Academy in Emmitsville, Maryland, that has studied and adapted to those changes, and teaches students how to battle those fires today.

He also has facilitated public education opportunities to teach people in the community about the dangers and how to be safer.

His career has come with a few perks over the years, including being assigned special duties for three presidents who visited the area: George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Crain said he worked with Biden’s Secret Service agents in securing the MCC campus when he visited last year.

He also worked on the Woodstock Square during the filming of “Groundhog Day” when there was a fire at what was P.O. Knuth’s.

In noting his father’s career as a volunteer firefighter, Crain said being a firefighter is in his blood.

“I was exposed to great, great people in fire service,” he said. “It’s a second family.”