Continue serving with the Hammonton Auxiliary Police, of which he was a charter member, or join the Hammonton Independent Volunteer Fire Company like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather before him.
"If you're going to do something, you might as well give it everything you have," Elvins said of his decision to quit the auxiliary police and become a firefighter.
And 63 years later, Elvins is still fighting fires.
He drives the fire trucks, operates the water pumps and even controls hoses during working fires.
"I'm in awe of him every day, and he acts like what he's doing is nothing. Like it's just part of his life," Hammonton Fire Chief Domenick DiGiovannangelo said.
The 86-year-old great-grandfather has outlasted most of his peers - in the fire company and in life. But he says he had no choice.
"This is what keeps me going," he said. "I don't see myself ever stopping."
Firefighting is in Elvins' blood.
The firehouse where he has spent much of his life is dedicated to his grandfather, Thomas Elvins, who was also a fireman there until Elvins' father accidentally backed over him with a fire truck and killed him.
"That driveway over there is where the house used to be," Elvins said looking out the window of one of the firehouse's bay doors at an adjacent driveway fronting the White Horse Pike. "That's where it happened. I was only 3 at the time."
But while Elvins is still passionate about firefighting, he says it is completely different now than it was when he joined.
"Those masks there, I've never worn one," he said of the self-contained breathing apparatuses firefighters must now wear when entering fires. "And if I had to do all the schooling that the kids nowadays have to go through, I don't know if I would've gone through with it."
On-the-job training was how one learned to be a firefighter in the 1940's, Elvins said.
"Your instructor was the guy behind you," he said. "When he got too hot, that's when he knew to pull you the hell back."
Shortly after joining the fire company, Elvins met a fiery redhead named Dorothy. In December, they will celebrate their 61st wedding anniversary.
Dorothy Elvins said she has never wanted to see her husband in action at a fire.
"Truthfully, I never know what he's heading into. I've never gone to a fire because I don't want to see it. I don't want to see what he does there or what might happen to him. I block it from my mind," she said, adding her husband didn't come home for two days during last year's wildfire in the Wharton State Forest. "I know that God will be good to us and send him home. But if anything were to happen to him at a fire, it would be the best way he would want to go."
Elvins jokes that he has held every rank in the fire house except for chief, and that's only because his wife threatened him with divorce if he ran for it.
"I used to spend so much time at the firehouse that she used to tell me I should just move my bed there," said Elvins, who was an assistant chief three times. "But when they were trying to get me to be chief, she said I better find myself a lawyer if I took them up on it. And that redhead meant business."
But despite the time her husband has spent putting himself in harms way - he broke a few ribs and received some bruises at a drill earlier this year - Dorothy Elvins said she would never try to talk her husband into retirement.
"If my husband couldn't do this, I think it would destroy him," she said. "He just lives for this. He was born to be a fireperson, and he just loves doing it."
DiGiovannangelo called Elvins an asset to the fire company.
"I wish I had 10 more guys like Tommy. He never sits idle, he's always doing something," DiGiovannangelo said. "If he responds to a call, and the truck has already left, he'll pick up a broom and start sweeping the engine bay, and he'll get the younger guys to do it too."
DiGiovannangelo said having Elvins around gives younger firefighters a greater appreciation for the fire company.
"Tommy knows a lot of the history of the company. He used to stoke the fires to keep the engines of the trucks warm when he was just 8 years old," DiGiovannangelo said. "To know he has dedicated all that time to one place fills all of us with a sense of pride."
Elvins said he thinks his knowledge of firefighting and years of service have earned him credibility with younger generations.
"I'm sure there are some that don't like me, because I tell you how it is," Elvins said. "But I think that they all respect me."
When Elvins drives around Hammonton, he sees not the modern architecture or chain stores. Instead, he remembers the buildings that were there before and the fires that destroyed them.
"I've been here awhile," he says. "Things have changed a lot."
Contact Robert Spahr:
609-272-7283
Elvins and Joe Monzo look at smoke on Route 206 in Hammonton during the Wharton State Forest fire in 2007, which Elvins spent two days helping to fight.
A 1951 photo shows Thomas Elvin III working on the Hammonton Fire Company No. 2 building. Elvin has been an active firefighter with the company since 1947.
