Photo by Jenny Kirk Wood Lake resident Troy Fiegen operates his own electrical contracting business, but generously donates a great deal of time and labor to non-profit efforts around the area.

WOOD LAKE — Troy Fiegen is a man who is passionate about everything he does, whether it’s working as an electrical contractor, pitching in to help non-profit organizations, serving as a technical rescue president and former fire chief or helping put a smile on people’s faces by taking the family’s therapy dog to different medical institutions in the area.

While the list of efforts he’s put in is long, Fiegen is adamant that he needs no recognition for any of them. “I don’t do it for a pat on the back,” the Wood Lake resident said. “I’m doing it for my own satisfaction. I love helping people.”

Fiegen and his wife, Nancy, often took therapy dog Murphy to nursing homes and hospitals in the area, including the Granite Falls Manor and Granite Falls Health.

“To me, there is no greater feeling than when I took Murphy around to see people,” he said. “Their faces light up and you make their day — maybe even their week, their month, their year.”

The Fiegens were devastated when Murphy died in August at the age of 9. Recently, however, they welcomed Teddybear Goldendoodle Moki into their home — and at Therapeutic Massage Center on Prenctice, LLC, in Granite Falls, which Nancy owns and operates — with the hope that Moki will carry on the same mission as Murphy.

“Murphy was amazing,” Troy Fiegen said. “(Moki is) going to grow up and do the same thing.”

Since July 1986, Fiegen has put his heart and soul into serving as a Wood Lake Fire Department and Rescue volunteer. He was fire chief there for about eight years.

“The awesome part of being on the fire department is that I knew all the people in the surrounding areas,” he said. “I knew all the guys from Montevideo, Marshall, Granite, Hanley Falls, Echo, Vesta — everybody within a 30-mile radius. I knew all the chiefs, firemen and the equipment they had.”

This past week has been heart-wrenching for Fiegen as he retired from the fire department after nearly 33 years. It’s volunteer work he’s proud of and will miss very much.

“You have to love what you’re doing and you have to love being a part of something,” Fiegen said. “I’ve done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of formal training. You have to devote a lot of time.”

While he was still physically able, Fiegen decided it was time to retire for other reasons.

“Some people think going to ball games is just the best thing in the world,” he said. “To me, it’s the fire and rescue. It about broke my heart to retire.”

Like most rural fire departments, Fiegen said Wood Lake struggled to keep up with the rising financial costs of equipment. To keep from raising taxes and to help out the city and townships, he said the fire department oftentimes relied on fundraisers.

For the past five years, Fiegen organized a car show in which 100 percent of the proceeds benefited the fire department. The entire family, including daughter Karissa, now 28, assisted in the effort.

“I love car shows and have all kinds of cars to show,” he said. “I talked to a whole bunch of different people in charge of all these other car shows in the area and we decided to put together our own car show. We had approximately 100 cars every year.”

Since its inception in 2002, Fiegen has served as president of the Yellow Medicine County Technical Rescue Team, which is made up of volunteers from different fire departments throughout the county.

“It was shortly after 9/11, so there was money available to put together teams like this,” he said. “Minnesota West instructor Dan Dahl put together rope rescue training for us. We were at an operational level, but we wanted to go even higher. We wanted to expand our training, so we went into collapsed structure, high-angle rescue, search and rescue, confined space — we put in hundreds of hours of training.”

In the last 17 years, Fiegen said tech rescue members have been part of quite a few rescues, including some grain bin rescues and missing persons searches.

“It’s been amazing the stuff you can learn, so you have the ability to help do something if almost anything comes up,” Fiegen said. “We also do parades all the time. We have so much fun.”

Fiegen, who operates his own electrical contracting business, also donates his time and labor to non-profit efforts around the area. He got together with John Richter and a couple other people in connection with the Granite Falls Western Fest rodeo and offered to re-do all the lighting.

“The lighting was crappy for a long, long time,” Fiegen said. “So I said, ‘Hey, instead of coming here and spending all this time fixing this stuff, how about I just do it all?’ So we decided to re-do it all. They pay for the material and I do all the work.”

Fiegen did a similar thing across the road at Lee Mar Ranch Equine Center, which supports individuals with disabilities and children at risk.

“It’s another place that is always looking for a fundraiser, so I went in there and redid their office,” he said. “They paid for all the materials and I did all the labor. I also did their hay shed and new lighting in the arena.”

St. Andrew’s Catholic Church was the beneficiary of new lighting as well.

“There’s no money in small town churches and they have this parish center,” Fiegen said. “That’s where the kitchen is at and where functions are held. They had a whole bunch of old lights they wanted fixed and I redid their bathroom for them in the basement.”

Fiegen also offered his assistance at the Granite Falls VFW.

“They were heehawing around saying they couldn’t upgrade all their lighting at once — from the old fluorescent junk to new LEDS — so I said I’d come in and do it all for free if they just paid my cost on the material,” Fiegen said. “We did the downstairs and they were really happy. I’ve got the upstairs to do now.”

Fiegen is also instrumental in helping at the Montevideo Chamber of Commerce with lighting at Christmastime. He also helped light trees for the Wood Lake Community Club and about 15 years ago, he built light poles for Christmas lights for the city of Wood Lake.

The Hanley Falls ball park also received courtesy light repair work from Fiegen when the former contractor wasn’t able to do it any longer.

Having developed strong relationships with people in Montevideo when half of his business was there many years ago, Fiegen has also contributed a great deal for the Chippewa County Fair.

“It’s a non-profit and we wanted to help keep it growing,” Fiegen said. “I told them I’d do all their work for them for free. They just pay my cost for materials. They think it’s the best thing in the world.”

While he wasn’t looking for any recognition, Fiegen said he was given a Friends of the Fair award one year.

“I don’t do it for that, though,” he said. “It’s not why I do any of this. I do it because it makes me feel good and the people I do it for appreciate it a lot. This is all non-profit, so nobody profits other than the community.”