For decades one of the island’s most-loved firemen, Arthur Raynor, has been teaching fire safety to children in Bermuda’s schools.

Now he has taken his message to Atlanta, Georgia, where he was selected to give a presentation at the four-day American Association of Service Coordinators conference.

The national not-for-profit member association represents the resident service coordinator profession. Their 3,200 members serve seniors, people with disabilities and low-income families living within affordable rental housing and the surrounding community.

Mr Raynor, who closed 31 years’ service for Bermuda’s fire service at the end of 2006 and moved to Atlanta, has been teaching fire safety at more than 500 schools in the area as well as delivering seminars and counselling to child arsonists.

“I was pleasantly surprised when I received the invitation to be one of the presenters at the conference,” he said. “The invitation from AASC stated that during their research for conference presenters, my name was submitted as a potential presenter.

“During my fire safety class presentations, I always try to think outside the box and avoid the ‘death by power-point’ style of presentations.”

He was asked to give two 90-minute presentations, which he thought went “pretty good”, leaving him “quite pleased” and was also invited to do the same thing next year in Kentucky. As part of his presentation titled “Fire Safety at Work and Home”, Mr Raynor included a segment on Bermuda in the hopes that the island would be considered for a future conference.