Firefighters museum enjoys revival thanks to O'Pake fellow

PHOTO: Bill Sheeler, from left, John Trimble, and Brody DeGroodt '24 MBA '25 at the Reading Area Firefighters Museum. 

In a way, the Reading Area Firefighters Museum was facing a three-alarm fire. It needed a strategic plan to keep the 16-year-old landmark alive.

Instead of calling 911, the volunteer-run museum reached out to the O’Pake Institute for Economic Development & Entrepreneurship at Alvernia University in 2024, and before long, help was on the way. Members of the institute’s leadership team and O’Pake Fellow Brody DeGroodt ’24 MBA ’25 made a visit to understand the organization’s needs.

“We have an aging group of volunteers,” Bill Sheeler, 78, of Lititz, who’s on the museum’s board and chair of its five-year development plan, said from the organization’s home in the 1876 former Liberty Fire Company No. 5 building at 501 S. Fifth St. “In order to keep going, we need to refresh our volunteer corps and supporters.”

DeGroodt, 22, of Rock Tavern, N.Y., took the lead as an undergraduate political science and history major and O’Pake Fellow. He studied the challenges and provided guidance on how to strengthen the organization going forward, conducting a review of the museum’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats — what’s known as a SWOT analysis — and developing a business model, Sheeler said. That information formed the basis for a strategic plan that included objectives, resource allocations, and strategies.

DeGroodt suggested key areas of focus: social media, development of an Education Committee and special events, Sheeler said. DeGroodt also connected the organization with Leadership Berks, a program that trains young people for nonprofit roles, to help with implementation of the many suggestions.

“We were very impressed with what they gave us,” Sheeler said. “We’ve scratched the surface on almost all of them.”

Since the O’Pake consultation, the museum improved its website and continues to bolster its outreach through Facebook and Instagram in the hopes of attracting younger visitors. In addition, an electronic database for the first time logged three floors of artifacts, including fire engines, an 1895 hose cart, buckets from the 1800s, fire helmets, badges and more.

“It was a massive canvassing project,” DeGroodt said. “I would go there every Thursday and canvass all three floors. As a history major, museums stand out to me.”

Even though O’Pake’s commitment to the museum was three months initially, the relationship has continued.

“They started out as clients,” said DeGroodt, who will enter Syracuse Law School in the fall. “I was super nervous, but I built my confidence over time. Now, I look forward to just stopping in and seeing everyone.”

He even brought a group of first-years over for a tour.

Meanwhile, the museum and its volunteers are seeing a slow but sure revival, Sheeler said. Several younger board members who have strong ties to the community have been recruited, he said, and outreach has increased with more school groups taking the tour.

Without O’Pake’s help, Sheeler said the museum would have been in dire straits.

“That would be leaving a bunch of 70-year-olds,” he said, “trying to figure out what the hell to do and how to do it.”

— By Lini S. Kadaba