Come June it will be 30 years since I began collecting the memories of Newark firefighters.

I have hundreds of hours of interviews and thousands of pages of transcript capturing and preserving the experiences of Newark's bravest.

These can be sliced and diced in a variety of ways to tell our story. The eight books produced so far from the oral history have been focused for the most part on the fire department.

My next book will be a little different.

Among the questions I ask are a few that deal with the city itself.

These questions include childhood memories, the neighborhoods of the city, conditions in the city when appointed, and even whether Newark is America's renaissance city or not.

The answers I have heard range from heartwarming to heart wrenching.

These answers will form the basis of the next book:

Remembrances of Newark:

An oral history from the 1920s to 2020 as told by her firefighters.

Parts of some of the stories have already appeared in Becoming a Firefighter. I also intend to include some in the upcoming

The Best Job in the World: Learning the Job

which I hope to publish in 2022.

Remembrances of Newark will bring all these stories and others into one book that does not focus on the fire department. The focus will be on the growth and changes that have occurred in Newark over the past century.

The stories are at street level as told by Newark Fire Department personnel appointed between 1940 and 2016.

The last year is flexible, I’m not done interviewing just yet. I hope to do a few more interviews to capture as diverse a view point as possible. When you read how varied the memories of a childhood in Newark are, you will understand why.

The stories of over 170 firefighters and a few operators will be presented in this book. Each experienced Newark’s ethnic and racial enclaves in a unique way.

The picture painted shows a diverse city whose citizens are continually adapting to the tremendous changes that buffeted Newark over the past century. From industrial powerhouse to distressed municipality to a renaissance city, Newark has remained resilient.

These tales take us through its past into its present and point to a hopeful future. Some may make you laugh and some may make you cry, but all will ring with the truth of the Newark overlooked by history books.