By MARK ALAN LOVEWELL

In an incomplete building behind the Edgartown Fire Station on Pease’s Point Way, they talk fire. Not recent fires. This talk is about history and a growing group of firemen’s enthusiasm for preserving that history. It’s been burning in the department for years — to the point where they are building a new fire museum.

Richard Kelly, fire department curator, has been cooking up the idea since 1996, following his retirement as the dairy man at the A& P. “I was sort of walking around and I saw all these things, pictures and what not,” Mr. Kelly said. “I thought to myself, if we could pull all these things together, we probably could create a little museum,” he said.

After 16 years of work, the museum is more than an idea. It is a building framed, roofed, just short of being shingled and months from being done.

Crews of volunteers inside and outside the fire department hope to have their museum completed in anticipation of the fire department’s 175th anniversary celebration next year. The goal won’t be easy to meet though, because for the moment they’ve run out of money.

The new museum emerged from a confluence of unconnected events. One group of firemen restored an ancient hand-powered pump. One fireman wrote a two-part article about the history of firefighting. Another fireman started collecting funds to pay for photograph frames. In the interest of making the museum a reality, a younger generation of firemen picked up hammers and started swinging.

Mr. Kelly started small and earned supporters. “My biggest goal in the beginning was to get a picture of every truck and find out how much each one cost the town,” he said.

“For example, the 1927 Mack fire engine; I spent a lot of time in the library, going through town reports. I found in a 1926 town report the voters raising $7,000 to buy this truck, which they voted,” Mr. Kelly said.

To fund the cost of framing the photographs, Mr. Kelly collected the fire department’s returnable soda cans. “I could get $12 for a bag of cans,” Mr. Kelly said. “In the beginning, that was a big boost, because every time I found an old picture I could have it framed at a cost from $12 to $14.”

The firemen drank a lot of soda at the station. (They stopped drinking beer years ago.)

“Then we got the idea we could sell T-shirts. I was making $300 to $400 a summer selling T-shirts, by selling them down on Main street near the parking lot through the summer,” Mr. Kelly said.

The fire department already had built a two-bay garage in the back in 1995 to store the two fire trucks, the 1927 Mack and the 1951. The intent was to get them out of Sharon Willoughby’s garage. “We built that garage not as a museum,” Mr. Kelly said.

As if by coincidence, in 1993, the Martha’s Vineyard Museum published two consecutive articles in the Intelligencer written by one of the town’s firemen, Stephen Vancour, about the history of fighting fires. Mr. Vancour’s work traced the start of the fire department to fire companies that went back to 1836. Today there are 55 members of the fire department.

A decade previous to the article, the fire department, with the help of firemen from Newburyport and the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, restored the 129-year-old Button Tub so that it could be pulled out of the museum bay exhibit room, could pump water again and participate in the Fourth of July parade. The Button Tub is the Island’s oldest firefighting apparatus on wheels.

Somewhere between the 1855 Button Tub’s restoration, Mr. Vancour’s article, the building of the garage and Mr. Kelly’s framed photographs, the idea of a museum took a firm hold with the Edgartown Firemen’s Association and their many friends. Then arose the idea that it would be great to have the Button Tub in an environmentally controlled room, near the two fire trucks. Add to that a permanent exhibit of Edgartown’s fire department stories, and it all becomes a first class museum. They already knew that the children down the street at the elementary school liked the garage and would love an expanded facility.

“Five years ago I went to the association and asked them if I could open an account, the Edgartown Fire Museum Account,” Mr. Kelly said. “So now all the money I raise for T-shirt money goes into that account.” It is a nonprofit 501(c)3 tax-deductible donation.

In a span of six years, Mr. Kelly raised $26,000.

There already are beautiful old wooden beams overhead in the new space. Cottles picked up old beams from an off-Island sawmill and brought them to the site, installing them at no charge. When completed, there will be climate-controlled air inside, for archival storage, funded through the Community Preservation Act, town and state approved.

Chappaquiddick firemen have pooled their resources to participate. They will design, build and donate the two huge barn doors for the facility.

The firemen expect they’ll need another $40,000 to complete the project. “We don’t know for sure what we need to finish it,” Mr. Kelly said, because of the tricky connection between donated labor and materials. But once the project is paid for and completed, the firemen plan to give the building to the town and have a party next year to celebrate the big anniversary.

David Nathans, executive director of the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, said this is a win-win for the community and the museum. “The key thing is that the firemen themselves have helped maintain the Button Tub for years. Once a year they get it in order for the Fourth of July parade. That is great annual maintenance that they’ve given to us.”

Having the fire museum take care of the Button Tub, on long-term loan, is good for a lot of reasons. “For us it is one of the many pieces of history of the Vineyard. It represents one of tens of thousands of stories, and they’ll be able to make that story come alive in a bigger and broader way with the help of the Button Tub.”

Andrew Kelly, 39, Mr. Kelly’s son, is the president of the Edgartown Firemen’s Association now. He said the association was already a busy organization when it took on the museum project. Throughout the year, the association raises money quite successfully for its scholarship fund; this year the association gave away three $5,000 scholarships to regional high school seniors. They give 300 gift bags to seniors at Christmas time. In October they offer a fire prevention program and a Halloween party for kids. And they have an open house breakfast for the community in August. To fund most of their endeavors, the association holds an annual late summer golf tournament and they send out a summer appeal letter. That letter went out this week.

Andrew Kelly said the appeal letter, which went out to 500 people, is critical. “Those $25 checks add up,” Andrew Kelly said.

“Some people give a lot more than that,” Richard Kelly added.

Richard Kelly’s $26,000 from T-shirts and soda cans is gone. It was spent on the building material to get the museum where it is now. Contributors have included Patrick Ahearn, who donated his services to create the museum’s simple design, which earned the necessary support of the selectmen. Eddie Smith gave a good price for cement. “We couldn’t have gotten as far as we have without all the labor being donated,” Richard Kelly said.

But his son added, “We are now down to nothing. We can’t even paint the building right now.” Not to mention the need for cedar shingling.

For Andrew Kelly, the story about the museum is a good deal closer than it might be for those in the community. The fire department represents generations of family firemen. Jay Sylvia, a lieutenant with Engine 4, is the grandson of the late fire chief. There are many more fathers and sons active in the force.

There are many firemen within the department who can remember Albert Sylvia, late fire chief, Elmer Santos, Dick Colter, Bob Bassett and other firemen who participated in the department and in Fourth of July parades and who have since passed on.

For the younger firemen, Andrew Kelly said, it was Steve Vancour’s article about the history of the department that helped to underwrite the notion that there was history worth preserving.

“That article,” Mr. Kelly said, “is what helped my generation get on board.”

Tax-deductible contributions to the Edgartown Firemen’s Association can be sent to P.O. Box 737, Edgartown, MA 02539-0737.