“Fire Call!” author George DeVault is an award-winning journalist, who responded to more than 5,000 fire calls over 30 years as a volunteer firefighter.
Born and raised in central Ohio, DeVault spent half his working life covering breaking news in Ohio and South Florida. While a freshman in high school, he started work at age 15 as a photographer for his hometown newspaper, The Delaware Gazette. He then worked as night police reporter and labor writer for The Columbus Dispatch, and later became assistant city editor at The Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel in Florida.
In 1981, he moved his young family to Emmaus, Pennsylvania, where he was executive editor/publisher of Rodale Press’ national organic farm magazine, The New Farm. To make more friends in his new hometown — and give something back to the community — he joined the Emmaus Fire Department. He rose through the ranks to become deputy fire chief, and later fire chief in the neighboring rural township where he lives. He is nationally certified as Firefighter I & II, Fire Officer I & II, and Fire Instructor I.
DeVault was a farm magazine and book editor/publisher at Rodale Inc. for 25 years. Special assistant to the late Chairman Robert Rodale, DeVault was editor, then general director of Rodale’s Russian-American joint venture, living with his family in Moscow, Russia, in 1993-1994.
DeVault has written widely for publications such as Successful Farming, Farm Journal, Top Producer, Mother Earth News, and Organic Gardening. He has edited or published six books including “How to Make $100,000 Farming 25 Acres,” “Backyard Market Gardening,” “Truckpatch” and “Return to Pleasant Valley,” a revival of the works of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Louis Bromfield.
He has received professional honors from groups as diverse as MagazineWeek, American Chiropractic Association, and North American Agricultural Journalists. In 2002, he was named a Food and Society Policy Fellow in a program funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. He was honored locally in 2004 as Conservation Farmer of the Year. DeVault was executive director and president of Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa (2008-2010). In 2011, DeVault was elected to a 6-year term as township supervisor in Pennsylvania.
DeVault lives on a small farm near Emmaus where he and his wife, Melanie, raise organic vegetables, flowers, blueberries, herbs and pastured pork. They have two grown children and three grandchildren.
