Editor’s Opinion ❘ By BOBBY HALTON
One of the best things about being in the fire service for a long time—well, actually, one of the best things about being alive for a long time—is the perspective you get on, well, things. For the past 20 years or so, in a variety of roles, I have participated in the construction of the Fire Department Instructors Conference (FDIC) International. Seeing the proposals to instruct at the world’s oldest and largest conference has been an education in and of itself. There are more adages than you can count, which remark on how “the more things change the more they stay the same,” “history repeats itself,” “there is nothing new under the sun,” and the list goes on and on. I think we all have a shared experience of how these sayings have felt true to us at one point or another in our lives. Then, at the same time oddly, we have felt exactly the opposite when we have stood back and thought, “Well, I never saw that before,” or “That’s a new one.”
Reviewing the 2022 proposals, we saw the number of those on new topics increase and some of those on old topics decrease, as they do naturally with time. For a variety of reasons, a topic captures the attention of firefighters, and we have an increase in proposals on it. If the topic has real staying power and interest, after a run of time it becomes a regular topic and gets into our system as a fundamental. Such was the case with the “Saving Our Own” programs of the ’90s. Self-rescue/RIT was recognized as important training; it lasted and passed the test of time. RIT and Saving Our Own have been institutionalized, modified, and absorbed into normal firefighter training in cadet and ongoing curricula.
Then we have the essentials, the classics: engine, truck, rescue, and the always popular “back to basics.” Every year, we have several great articles and classes on why we need to go back to the basics. The authors will point out how we have drifted, how the past generation lost their way, and how they with unique and unparalleled insights have rediscovered our roots.
These are great folks and smart firefighters who locally are reacting to what they are experiencing. And, to the point, we always need to be focused on the basics, always. But, curiously, what caught our attention as an industry for 2022 as reflected in the number of proposals FDIC received on it was a topic that, without question, has been the obsession of humans from time immortal: leadership.
The folks who pay attention to such things say that no topic has been more discussed, no topic has had more written about it, and no topic has had less consensus on it than leadership. I would guess it is because we all are looking for leaders, people who we hope will inspire us and give us direction. In our industry, we have no lack of written leadership materials, and more are being produced as I write these words. This is a good thing—different people react to different voices, different perspectives.
The fire service has been blessed in the past few years to witness great leaders in action: Peter Ganci, Leo Stapleton, and Alan Brunacini among the obvious nationally and numerous local leaders who have led and who are leading wonderful organizations today. The issue of leadership is so nuanced, everyone is a leader to some extent. The question is, are you leading well or poorly? That is easier to assess than you may think.
Real leaders have always put principles ahead of everything else, principles. When someone puts ideology or politics first, he is either a fool or a tyrant respectively; often, he is both. Imagine John Adams’ courage and leadership when he defended the British soldiers who shot and killed the colonists at Boston’s Custom House in 1770—not an easy choice but the right thing to do. He understood the principle of the right to good representation and the right of self-defense. No young person hopes to grow up to be Neville Chamberlin, the great appeaser; no, they want to be Winston Churchill. No one wants to be remembered like Benedict Arnold; they want to be remembered like George Washington.
Texans don’t remember Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett because they ran away; no, they stood their ground and fought for the principles they knew to be worth fighting and dying for. Harriet Tubman didn’t just escape; she rescued and fought. Detrick Bonhoeffer returned to Germany to defy the Nazis alone. Leaders stand up for the individual; leaders oppose “the mob,” the status quo, and the powerful. They take unpopular positions not to be liked but so they can live with themselves. Everyone mentioned above suffered greatly for the principles they held, and they did it anyway.
Why leadership is such a burning issue now may have been explained best by the American novelist G. Michael Hopf in his book Those Who Remain, in which he wrote, “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times.” The world has been, collectively speaking, experiencing very good times, and many would argue we are enduring very weak leaders. The strong protect the weak, stand for principles, respect the individual, honor their heritage, and unite and inspire others to good deeds.
It is only natural that firefighters, who have sworn an oath before God and their fellow firefighters to protect the threatened and defend the Constitution, the very definition of strong people, would be keenly interested in how we can become stronger, how we can stand for nature’s fundamental principles, and how we can lead others toward a better tomorrow.
