Goshen Township Trustees endorse road name change
At their May 20th meeting, the Goshen Township Board of Trustees voted unanimously to endorse the name change of a section of "Wood Street" to "Francis Fagin Way."
The change will honor one of the founding members of Goshen Township's Fire Department, Francis "Smoke" Fagin.
"It's a long overdue honor, I urge you to please support this," the community spoke out in favor of the change as well. Through the room you could hear small talk between Goshen residents, " the whole township would appreciate this, you know?"
"Smoke" Fagin worked with the department for 46 years, taking it from it's formation as a "bucket brigade" to a fully functioning motorized department. "If not for people like [Smoke] the department wouldn't be what it is today," current Goshen Fire Chief Virgil Murphy said.
Smoke's son Dan was also at the meeting. He also worked as a Goshen Township Firefighter, serving in capacity as chief for many years. For awhile, father and son worked side by side, " Listen to what dad tells you and you won't have no problems," Fagin said. He explained that he wasn't a part of the process to change the street name, in fact he didn't even know about it!
"It was a surprise to me, I had no idea until about a month ago," Fagin said when the fire department clued him in, he was all for the idea, " I said yeah! This is long overdue, absolutely. He was a great man. If we had people like that now-a-days we wouldn't have these kinds of problems."
The name change would apply to Wood Street, between George and Main Streets. This is the site of the original Goshen Township Fire department that Smoke helped create. All five homeowners on this section of the road are in full support of the change.
The idea for the name change began months ago when firefighter Erwin Walker Jr. began work on history of the department. Next, the request for name change moves on to the Clermont County Commissioner's Office for consideration.
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