Fire Chief

Jim Anderson is a friend of mine who owns a strange little bar in Tucson, Ariz. Jim is a man in his 60s who’s spent his adult life creating a cult of personality around his personality. One of the most important things to Jim is being seen and recognized. His bar is, for all practical purposes, a shrine to him. The walls are plastered with photographs and paintings of Jim, he wears jewelry made into his image, he has a tattoo of his face on his arm, and all of his employees and many of his customers wear shirts with — you guessed it — a picture of Jim.

Jim’s is not one of those faces that blends into the crowd. His bronze, round head is shaved clean save for the long, white mustache, which he waxes and curls.

Jim once told me his goal was to make people stop thinking about themselves, even if for only a few seconds, and think about him.

Despite that it seems his sole reason to live is self-promotion, no person is one-dimensional. I’ve known Jim for more than 10 years and spend as much time with him as possible when I’m in Tucson. The other side to Jim is that he never calls attention to his good deeds. He never brings up how he hires homeless guys to clean his parking lot, or throws money on the ground in public places, or buyout the flower vendor’s supply of roses to hand out to ladies at his bar. He does these things and more whether his business is doing well or doing poorly and never seeks acknowledgment, credit or praise.

I thought about Jim late last month as I ran in a five-mile race here in Chicago. The weather in Chicago can be foul. And it always seems to be foul for the annual Shamrock Shuffle through the city’s downtown area. This year it was exceptionally foul with driving winds, snow and a good inch of slushy water on the roadways. It was a much better day to stay home than to run five miles.

But I had something to prove to myself. I had to prove that I could do it in those conditions in my turnout gear (pants, coat, gloves and helmet). I’m reasonably fit for my age and others, such as the chief from Georgia who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and the firefighter from Illinois who ran the Chicago Marathon both in full turnout gear with SCBA, have achieved more. Five miles seemed doable.

I learned a few things along the way.

The first thing I learned is that running in that gear is hard. In fact, I have an easier time running twice the distance in regular exercise clothes.

More importantly, I learned that when people see you at an event like that in something as recognizable as turnouts, they stop thinking about themselves and think about you — even if it is for a few seconds. During the run, countless runners and spectators shouted encouragements, praise and thanks to me. The praise and “thanks for what you do” comments left me uncomfortable because they are unearned. As a probationary volunteer firefighter, I’ve not yet been cleared to do anything other than training and go on standby during a call. OK, I did once save a headless baby doll during search-and-rescue training.

I also learned that by wearing that gear I represented something larger than just a 45-year-old guy out for a run, and because of that, I couldn’t quit. Failure was not an option.

That much attention also made me think of a dilemma fire chiefs face. A positive public opinion of firefighting is crucial to the success of fire departments. It plays directly into tangibles such as funding levels and fire code adoption. And a key component to positive public opinion is firefighter humility. Being highly visible in the community and being humble can be at odds with one another. Several chiefs have told me they sometimes wish we could return to a time prior to Sept. 11, a time when firefighters were less glorified and more humble.

We can’t go back to when the Twin Towers still stood and Rescue Me was unscripted. But fire chiefs can manage public opinion by setting the tone in their departments to strike the right balance between visibility and humility.