Pancake breakfast fundraiser a yearly hit for Charles City Fire Department

By Kelly Terpstra, kterpstra@charlescitypress.com

A pile of two, three, four or even more.

It was all-you-can-eat on Sunday at the fire station in Charles City.

The annual breakfast fundraiser put on by the Charles City Fire Department featured pancakes and plenty of them.

Many tables were set up throughout the fire station, and hungry attendees poured bottles of syrup onto fresh-off-the-griddle stacks of  hotcakes throughout the morning and into the afternoon.

“It’s one of those deals where it’s something that people like. People like a pancake,” said Charles City Fire Chief Eric Whipple.

Whipple said several fire departments in the area will throw a fundraiser every year that features a chili feed, rib dinner or a fish or steak fry.

Whipple prefers pancakes.

“It’s gone well for us. It’s gone so well that this is our main fundraiser of the year. We don’t do a whole lot of other fundraisers,” he said. “It’s a little easier to handle for us to be able to put out as much food as we can quickly.”

The CCFD Pancake Breakfast Fundraiser brings hundreds of people to the station to enjoy the syrupy breakfast treat to go along with slices of ham, cold juice or hot coffee. The fundraiser culminates National Fire Prevention Week in the second week of October.

“It gets the community involved and coming out to see our department and kind of talk with the firefighters and learn kind of a little bit about what we do,” Whipple added.

Proceeds from the freewill donations can help fund and maintain Whipple’s 25-man volunteer crew by purchasing equipment or other necessary tools to battle a blaze. He said the ham was donated by Smithfield Foods in Mason City.

“It’s all profit for us – which is good and what we need,” said Whipple.

Another activity that helps generate revenue for the Fire Department are pool fills during the spring and summer months. Whipple said those have been popular over the years and have been requested by many residences that have a swimming pool. They’ll then make a donation or contribution after their pool is filled with water.

Whipple said the peak breakfast crowd was at around 9 a.m.

“We probably turned over these tables six or seven times,” Whipple said a little before noon.

The pancake breakfast lasted from 8 a.m. until 12:30 p.m.

“People come eat pancakes and they can donate whatever they want. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a dollar, some change or if they want to give us a little bigger donation. We’ll gladly accept that, too,” said Whipple.

He didn’t know how long the firefighter pancake fundraiser had been going on in Charles City. Whipple has been a full-time member of the CCFD for 17 years, the last seven of those as fire chief.

Whipple heads a full-time fire department of four, including Assistant Fire Chief Marty Parcher, firefighter Curt Teeter and investigator Darien Uetz. The rest of the firefighters are volunteers.

Lt. Jason Webster was in charge of the griddle, where in past years he said he has served over 400 pancakes.

“We’ll keep serving pancakes – all you can eat,” said Whipple. “Pancakes and ham.”