By DONNA THORNTON, Editor
A lot of kids dream about being a firefighter when they grown up, but Jeff Beck wasn’t one of them. A suggestion from a friend led to a paid on-call job, then becoming a full-time firefighter as soon as a position was added.
“I think it was ’96 when I actually got hired full time and I’ve been there ever since,” Beck said. He worked his way through the department, “from the bottom to the top” he said, when he was named chief 11 years ago.
At the end of the month, Beck will retire as chief after 30 years at the Fire Department. It was 1992 when he came on board, working on-call, he believes, after he ran into firefighter Tim Potter at the Boaz Rec Center.
“He said ‘hey, you want to be a fireman?’
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do at that point,” Beck said. “I’d been out of school a couple of years.”
“He said come by one day, and we’ll show you around,” Beck said. He went by and he got interested, leading to the paid on-call position. He worked that way for about four years as it took a while to get another position opened as a full-time firefighter.
“I didn’t want just an office job. I liked being outdoors and doing stuff,” Beck said. “That’s like our fire calls, no two fires are alike. You see different stuff all the time.
“That was, I guess, the enjoyment of it. That, and brotherhood and the comradery of the guys. It’s like having a big family.
“That’ll probably be the hardest part,” Beck said of retiring. The fire station has been his home away from home for a long time and not having that he said, will be an adjustment.
But Beck said he’s got grandkids now, He plans to help with them, maybe play a little more golf and other activities to stay fit.
Helping others has been the most rewarding part of the job, sometimes in good times, sometimes in bad times.
“That’s what I’ve enjoyed. I love fighting fires, but we don’t have a lot of fires,” he said. “I guess just helping people in their time of need.”
Seeing death, and family members suffering from at wreck scenes or medical calls has been the hardest part.
One of the blessings in his career, Beck said, was never seeing a serious or fatal injury to any of the men under his watch.
He said he’s seen great changes in the fire service and they have made the job safer for firefighters.
“There were no thermal cameras – nobody could afford them – back in the ‘90s,” the retiring chief recalled. “That was military stuff back then. Even our airpacks – the technology has changed so much. It’s definitely an improvement. Even our turnouts, the material used, he said, is better.
The city has grown over the years, annexing Mountainboro, and property out toward Beulah and Double Bridges. The department has grown as well. There is still just one fire station, but there is more inside it, in terms of people and equipment.
“Personnel-wise and equipment wise we’ve grown,” Beck said. When he was hired there were three on duty per shift; he made the fourth person. “Today, one shift has seven, the other two have six.”
Beck said even with expanded territory, the department had good response times. “We can be pretty much anywhere in the city – unless traffic is really bad – in less than five minutes.”
Good response times are an on-going goal, he said, to be even quicker.
Going “by the book” it’s suggested that a department have 15 in response to a fire, on the scene within a certain amount of time, the chief explained. With six or seven on a shift, the department can get by, calling in back-up for a fire call.
Fire calls, fortunately, don’t take up the majority of firefighters’ time on duty. Medical calls make up the bulk of the department’s calls.
Beck said he’ll leave the department with great gratitude for the various mayors he’s worked under, and for the opportunities he was given to advance through the department to became its chief.
“We definitely hate to lose somebody with Chief Beck’s experience and knowledge,” Boaz Human Resource Director Jeff Sims said. “But he’s done a good job, surrounding himself with good people. He’s done an excellent job recruiting and hiring good people up there. I feel like, and I hope he feels like, he’s leaving us in a good spot. We feel confident with the crew we’ve got there.”
“We’re going to look for someone with some good leadership skills to step in,” Sims said. He said he didn’t predict any whole-scale changes in the department – just someone to come in an pick up where Beck will leave off.
Sims noted that its unusual for someone to stay at one job as long as Beck has been with Boaz Fire & Rescue – and that Beck is leaving behind a good team.
“I’m not worried,” Beck said. “They’re good people. I’ve got a young bunch but they’re all gung-ho and they love helping people, just like I do.
“You’ve got to be willing to do that, being a servant,” he said.
“You hear people say if you love what your doing, it’s not really a job,” Beck said. “I’ve enjoyed going to work every day. I’ve had jobs before where you dreaded going to work.
“But I didn’t really consider it a job. It was fun to be around the guys and helping people. You get calls all through the night and you get up and go,” the chief said. “That’s just part of it.”
Mayor Tim Walker, left, will say farewell to his fire chief, Jeff Beck, right, this year. Beck is retiring after 30 years with the city. Photo by DONNA THORNTON l The Leader
