Spring Fire Department is inviting residents to tour its new training center on Saturday, Oct. 3, in what the department calls its biggest Fire Prevention Month kickoff.

The W.W. "Cotton" Weaver Training Center, located near Lexington and Louetta in Spring, will hold its public grand opening as a community celebration. The department has been promoting the event on its official X account, urging residents to save the date.

The facility is named for Wilbur Waldo "Cotton" Weaver, a former Spring Fire chief who volunteered with the department for more than 70 years. Weaver died Jan. 14 at age 93.

His connection to Spring Fire stretched back to 1953, when a fire at Immanuel Church in Spring led to the founding of the Spring Volunteer Fire Department. Weaver joined as a volunteer and never left. Before his fire service career, he worked at a bakery, then spent a decade at Hughes Tool Company and more than three decades at Cameron Iron.

He earned his nickname as a child. "I looked like a cotton ball and once they called me that it stuck for the rest of my life," Weaver once said, according to a memorial posted by the department.

Weaver toured the training center's construction site multiple times in 2025, stopping to thank workers and telling them how "fantastic" the buildings were. He learned before his death that the facility would carry his name.

One of his favorite stories was how the early fire department used to auction off livestock show cows to put fuel in the trucks.

The department opened Phase I of the training center on May 15 with generations of Weaver's family present. By late May, Spring Fire's newest captains and apparatus operators had completed their first live burn at the facility. The center has also hosted the department's Physical Ability Test (PAT), which begins with a 100-foot climb to the bucket of Tower 70.

Fire Chief Scott Seifert credited Facilities Director Donald May with overseeing the project at the department's November 2025 awards banquet, alongside renovations at Station 77 and the reopening of Station 72.

The Oct. 3 grand opening is open to the public. The department said to stay tuned on its social media channels for event times and a full schedule of activities.