WARREN City firefighters' muscle poses heat up their calendar sales

More than 1,500 of the calendars were sold, raising more than $7,800.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- They shed their shirts and flexed their muscles for a good cause.
The 2003 Men of the WFD calendar, featuring photographs of 12 city firefighters in sometimes provocative poses with come-hither stares, sold 1,526 copies and raised about $7,882.
More than half of the money is being doled out to area charities.
Firefighters of the Warren Fire Department will give checks for $1,000 each to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, Salvation Army and Fine Arts Council of Trumbull County, or FACT.
FACT provides arts activities such as the Noon in the Park summer concert series, the Chalk on the Walk event for children and the annual fall Ghost Walk.
The Warren Family Mission will receive a $470 check with $469 going to the Animal Welfare League of Trumbull County.
Walk to Remember
A $101 check was presented last year to radio station Hot FM 101's Walk to Remember, which raised money for the families of the members of New York City safety forces who were killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, collapse of the World Trade Center Towers.
The remaining amount will go into a fund for the purchase of a union hall for firefighters.
"I'm very pleased," said Chuck Eggleston, a firefighter and one of the organizers of the fund-raiser, who was featured on one of the calendar's pages.
Judges from the press and community groups selected the 12 firefighters to heat up the calendar's pages from the 27 who posed.
"For it being the first year, I thought it was an overwhelming success," Eggleston said.
In the future
He doesn't plan a 2004 edition but says more firefighters' calendars may be produced in future years.
"It's just something we thought would be a good idea," Eggleston said. "It's something to allow people to put a face with a firefighter's name."