NEWFANE—Jason Borton may have an M. D. after his name, but the sound of a siren still makes his heart leap.

Borton talks about it in his new “Memoirs of a Volunteer Firefighter” autobiography.

The book details his experiences with Sweeney Hose Company No. 7, which he once served in North Tonawanda.

Borton is an emergency medicine physician at both Millard Fillmore hospitals. He recently spoke about his memoir, to be published in e-book form this fall, while taking a break at the Zimmerman Street fire station.

Borton, 38,a North Tonawanda native who lives in Newfane, recalls the seemingly countless hours of training, among other things.

“Three hundred to 400 hours. The public doesn’t get to see us when we’re facing an angry bingo mob or breaking up a brawl in a beer tent. They don’t see us when we’re confronting the death of a brother firefighter who made the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty. I wanted people to see the big picture, and all the friendships.”

We hear that your grandmother, Laura Borton, played a role in fanning your fascination with firefighting.

Yes, my grandmother, now in her 80s, played a very special part in piquing my interest in firefighting. She even took me to the North Tonawanda Fire Headquarters one day when I was about 8, for a change of scenery. Engine 7 was housed there. Little did she or I realize that day that one day, I would respond as a volunteer to real, and not imaginary, fires with that fire engine. My grand-mother was always supportive.

We read the stories about firefighters getting injured or killed. If every firefighter makes it home from every call they go on, then it’s been a good day. No one starts their day thinking it’s going to be their last.

Even though I’ve been out of it for years, I do miss the experience of firefighting itself. Every time I hear a fire engine siren, or see a fire truck racing to a fire where I live now, I feel part of me racing away with that fire truck. I want to help. That’s not to say that I don’t retain some of my skills. Not long ago, the drip pan on my propane grill caught fire when I was grilling a piece of steak. My son Zander was out in the driveway with me. He watched as his dad calmly grabbed a glove, removed the drip pan and set it on the concrete. I then managed to fully extinguish that blaze with a couple of sprays with the garden hose. I keep the grease trap under the grill nice and clean now.

As a doctor, every day I meet someone new, and I look forward to that. But when I was in the first two years of medical school at the University at Buffalo on Main Street, I would often emerge from three or four hours of mind-numbing lectures to hear the rigs of the Buffalo Fire Department wailing in the distance. At times, I wondered if I was put on earth to be a firefighter in a fully paid department. I had ranked high on the North Tonawanda Fire Department civil service test with a score of 90. The list was “good” for four years. It ran from November 6, 1995, until November 6, 1999. That was basically the same time I was enrolled in med school. Not a single soul was hired onto the career department from that list.

I think ultimately I’d have become restless if I had become a career firefighter. The thought of staying at a fire station, waiting for something to happen, would have eventually driven me bonkers. I have many friends in the career department now. They all seem to love their job. I’m happy for them, and I know they’ll never forget their roots as volunteer firefighters. Whether they’re volunteer or “career,” they all have a great love for firefighting.

It was a bittersweet day, something I wasn’t looking forward to. I had a family then, and we had moved. No longer would I be an active firefighter able to go into burning buildings to fight one of nature’s oldest enemies. I couldn’t answer first-aid calls and other calls for help.

My daughter Alannah was with me the day in 2005 when I drove to Fire Headquarters to turn in my gear. What normally would’ve been a 25-minute ride turned out to be a 40-minute ride, as I seemed to want to hold onto my firefighting gear for just a little longer. We took the back roads, and before we got into North Tonawanda, we stopped at a park outside the city along the Erie Canal.

I got out of my truck and opened the plastic bin holding my fire gear for many years. The bin didn’t have my helmet, as I wrote a letter to Chief Greg Frank, asking him if I could keep it as a memento of my service with the department. He accepted. I slowly pulled out my turnout coat—the coat you wear firefighting—and searched the pocket for any of my personal possessions. I pulled out a pocket guide to firefighting. I looked over to my then-2-year-old daughter as she watched me from her car seat. I said to her, “I want you to remember this. I want you to remember that your daddy was a fireman.” She was excited about the book coming out.

I like to see where we were, and how that develops into what we do today. I collect firefighting antiques, like old fire nozzles and lanterns. I was looking through some of the historical papers of the Sweeney Hose Company. Many of the original notes and requests from the company were written on small pieces of stationery specially printed for the Sweeney Hose Company. Most of the notes are from the early years of the fire company in the late 1890s. There are requests to the City Council to add, and remove, members from the city rolls. There’s even a request to the Council to move a fire alarm bell so members of the Sweeney Hose Company could more easily hear an alarm of fire.

The most interesting piece of history on these sheets of paper is the words imprinted on the top of each page. The sheets read: “Our motto—When duty calls, we fly to save.”

Today in an emergency room, I know probably what I’ll see on a daily basis. Firefighters never know exactly what trouble they’re driving to.