Three Leaders, Three Lanes
When Olan Morelan, Jim Ludden, and Tyler Moles walked into Leadership Springfield’s Signature Class 46, they each came from different corners of the community. Olan served as Assistant Chief of Support Services for the Springfield Fire Department. Jim worked alongside him as Division Chief of Community Risk Reduction. Tyler led the Discovery Center as CEO, focused on STEM education for the city’s children. They were all busy people doing meaningful work, but largely in their own lanes.
What happened over that program year changed that and ultimately led to one of the most exciting exhibits in Springfield: a fully immersive, life-size fire station experience inside the Discovery Center.
One idea that hit Olan hardest early in the program was a simple but uncomfortable observation: Springfield, for all its community spirit, is what some describe as “collaboration poor.”
“I never really thought about us being collaboration poor,” Olan reflected, “because our community does so much for the community and the people in it.” Yet the structures and rhythms of professional life tend to keep people separated, even those working toward similar goals.
Leadership Springfield helps to interrupt that pattern. The program brings together leaders from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors and puts them in a room once a month for a full year. For Jim, the value was immediate: “Having the opportunity to step outside the fire department and build relationships in key roles, so we know what some of those needs are, where those collaboration efforts are going to be, that was huge.”
Tyler put it even more plainly: “It forces you to connect with people you wouldn’t normally come across. And some of those people are people you have to meet if you’re going to do good things for the community.”
Olan and Tyler, for instance, met briefly before Leadership Springfield, connecting over a conversation about a fire truck. But without the relationship they built during the program year, that encounter likely would have ended there.
From Hallway Idea to Fire Station 3.14
Tyler will be the first to tell you that the idea for a fire station exhibit at the Discovery Center had been living in his imagination for a long time. “I wanted to do this since 2021,” he said. “Actually, since I was about five.”
But the Signature Class gave the dream a real path forward. During their program year, Olan and Tyler found themselves talking about the idea repeatedly, every month, in the hallways and in the conversations that spring up naturally when you spend that much time with the same group of people.
“We talked about how many times over the course of the year, how cool it would be if we did an area where kids can learn about the fire department, about science and education, and public safety all at the same time,” Olan remembered.
The spark that turned conversation into action came after graduation, when Tyler posted about a family in the community whose home had been destroyed by a storm. Leadership Springfield alumni rallied to help, and in that moment, when Olan came to the Discovery Center for something unrelated, the two of them finally stood in the space and said, “Let’s just do it.”
“It really just took that nudge,” Olan said. “We’re here, let’s go look at this space.”
The Fire Station 3.14 exhibit that emerged from that nudge is nothing short of remarkable. When families walk through the doors 
and head upstairs, a full-size firetruck greets them, a visual anchor that pulls kids in the moment they spot it. From there, the experience unfolds across a series of interactive stations designed around one core principle: children learn best through play.
Kids can climb on the firetruck, grab the steering wheel, and put on the headset to hear a 911 dispatcher sending units out on a call. They can slide down a fire pole, crawl through an escape tunnel that teaches them to “get low and go,” and do an activity on the other side to create their own home escape plan. A simulated 911 call station lets kids practice talking to emergency services in a safe, consequence-free environment. As Tyler noted, the alternative of trying to practice on an actual phone tends to result in fire trucks showing up at your house.
From Jim’s community risk reduction perspective, the educational value goes beyond the fun. “You come in, and it’s not just an experience where you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m going to play with this thing,’” he explained. “You’re actually learning while you do it.” Whether it’s learning to feel a door for heat before opening it or recognizing the signs of a fire inside a building, every element of the exhibit is designed with a takeaway.
“If they take away one or two things about fire safety, that’s amazing,” Tyler said. “And it also sparks their minds for the things they’re going to learn later.”
What Comes Next
None of this happened in a vacuum. The community’s outpouring of support brought the physical exhibit together and caught even its creators off guard.
Olan sent a simple email to fire departments across the region asking if they’d like to be represented with a patch on the exhibit wall. The response was overwhelming, with patches piling in from departments throughout the area, now displayed proudly in the space. Firemaster did all the restoration work on the firetruck without charging a dime. Finishing Touch handled the graphics, also at no cost. Lion Apparel donated the gear. The Sunshine Brotherhood contributed. Firefighters pulled and polished the fire pole from the rafters of old Station One. Pike Fraternity provided funding that had been earmarked for community risk reduction and happened to align perfectly with the project’s needs.
“It just showed how much our community got behind the idea that we’re going to do something cool for the kids,” Olan said.
When the ribbon was cut, the room was packed with city and county officials, state representatives, the State Fire Marshal, a congressman, the mayor, and nearly 200 members of the community. A moment for all to celebrate the joint effort.
The exhibit has since become a launching pad. Tyler described how the project’s success has already inspired new collaborations, including work with Children’s Mercy to develop a clinic model and a “granny model home” focused on child safety.
“This project springboarded multiple other projects,” he said. “I think it’s going to snowball from there.”
Why It Matters
Ask any of the three men what this project means to them, and the answers are deeply personal.
For Jim, the dream is the moment a child survives a fire because of something they learned in that exhibit. “We’ve had some of these kids have these opportunities, and they’re sharing with us, maybe at our awards banquet, that they got out of a fire because of what you taught us, and my family is safe,” he said. “That’s where it hits home for me.”
For Olan, it’s the feeling of doing something in his career he never expected to do, standing in front of 187 people at an opening ceremony, watching a wave of kids rush past him the moment the ribbon was cut to get their hands on that firetruck.
“How much better does that get, in public service?” he asked. “That was pretty incredible.”
And for Tyler, it’s about magnitude. The Discovery Center was already doing good work. This exhibit expands how much good it can do, for more kids, more families, and more of the community that doesn’t yet have access to what the center offers.
Leadership Springfield didn’t give these three their passion. They each had that long before they walked through the door. What it gave them was each other, and the relationship, trust, and shared language to do something together they never would have done alone.
As Olan put it: “Leadership Springfield is, to me, getting involved in the community. Getting to know your neighbor. Getting to know the people that are working just as hard as you are to have a better community.”
In Springfield, that’s exactly what this exhibit is: a community working hard for its kids.
