Instead of her humdrum office duties she suddenly had the vital role of taking emergency calls at Oakham Fire Station with people's lives at stake.

It was back in 1964 that Jean made her job switch and she has never regretted it. Now 78, she has a host of memories from those days, some of them tinged with tragedy and others which still make her chuckle.

It was Jean who took the call alerting the fire service to the Vulcan aircraft crash at Burley on the Hill 40 years ago. A number of crew members died that day and firefighters were sent to the scene from all over the area.

"It was a lunchtime when I took the call," recalled Jean. "A woman at the other end was muttering to someone who I now believe was the pilot who had managed to limp to her house.

"I kept saying 'fire service, can I help you?' Then she just said 'yes, an aeroplane has crashed in my garden'.

"Apparently, she had been looking out of her kitchen window waiting for her husband and son to come home for lunch at the time. Thankfully, they were late on that occasion because the garden ended up with a huge crater in the middle of it."

Traffic was much lighter back in the 1960s and early 1970s but there were still many serious road accidents. Some of those killed or injured were known to firefighters who dealt with the aftermath.

"I remember one at the crossroads at Morcott when a lorry was in collision with a car containing three members of the Women's Institute from another part of the country," said Jean.

"Tragically, the women were all killed. They had a large quantity of home-made jam in the car and the jars all smashed. When the emergency services arrived they thought it was blood. That accident upset a lot of the firefighters who went out to it."

A lot of Jean's time was spent at the fire station, which was originally facing Brooke Road before being demolished and rebuilt looking on to South Street. But now and then she would have to travel around the area visiting emergency scenes or making trips to neighbouring stations.

She recalls one of her busiest days in the job during one very dry summer when two embankment fires broke out from sparks given out by diesel trains, prompting firefighters to be scrambled from across the area.

"One was at Whissendine and the other was at Stapleford Park," recalled Jean. "I had to go out to Stapleford Park and I remember running over grass which was still alight.

"Then I had to go to Whissendine to get information before heading off to pick up meals from Billesdon Fire Station which I then had to take to Melton Mowbray station to cook there. I clocked on at 8 in the morning and it turned out to be a 12-hour shift."

Jean went to school in Hertfordshire and moved to Rutland in the early 1960s. She found secretarial work at the Woodhall Duckham plant hire firm in Oakham.

She didn't enjoy her job and when husband Ray, who was a swimming teacher at the Vale of Catmose College pool, heard about a vacancy at the fire station Jean sent off an application.

"They wanted to know what I was like talking on the phone," she recalled. "I do have a tendency to stutter but I found that whenever I was taking calls at the station I was cool and calm. It felt like a thermometer gauge going down in my head whenever the phone rang."

It wasn't always busy for Jean at the fire station. She said: "The first emergency call I got after I joined was a month later. It was a farm at Langham. A prisoner from Ashwell who was on day release had been smoking and the piggery caught fire. A piglet lost its tail in that one."

She had many other duties aside from answering the phone. The fire service taught her to drive so she could take official vehicles on errands between stations and occasionally to call-outs. Jean also started cooking for the firefighters – of which there were 20 full-timers on four watches.

"I thought they were eating very badly, with chips and other fatty foods, so I prepared some healthier meals," she said. "I was the only woman working at the station but they all treated me well and we got on really well."

One of Jean's proudest moments in the job was receiving the Queen's Long Service Medal after 20 years in the job. She served another five before retiring – her final years were spent at Loughborough Fire Station.

This year Jean and Ray celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary. He now lives at a care home in Stamford while she continues to live in Grampian Way, Oakham.

The couple had two foster sons and they have produced seven children and two grandchildren between them for the Huttons to dote on.

There were a lot of sad days during her time in the fire service but Jean has many funny memories. One involved a call-out for a cat stuck in a tree near Southfield School in Oakham.

Jean said: "We had several reports of this cat in a tree over several days and we didn't go out straight away because human lives are considered more important than those of animals.

"When we finally got out there the crew discovered it was our divisional commander Chris Nugent's cat, which had been missing for a few days. He was a little bit embarrassed about that but it gave us all a laugh."