Norfolk’s fire chief retires after 40 years with the city, a boyhood dream fulfilled

Jan. 30--NORFOLK -- To hear Jeffrey Wise tell it, he was just along for the ride.

"Here I am. If the door opens I'll walk through it," Wise said, summing up his philosophy.

It's not exactly what you'd expect to hear from someone whose job may have occasionally required him to kick a door down.

After 40 years with Norfolk Fire-Rescue, the last 10 years as chief of the nearly 1,000-person department, Wise is set to retire this week.

Deputy Chief Michael Brooks will helm the department temporarily, until a permanent decision is made.

Wise credits his accomplishments along the way to a lot of things besides himself: his fellow firefighters and officers, prayer, his wife.

Growing up in a tiny mining town in central Pennsylvania, Wise had always wanted to be a firefighter.

An NBC show about a firefighting squad called "Emergency!" debuted in 1972, when Wise was 18. It cemented the desire, but it would be years before he was pushed into following his dream.

That came from his wife, Debbie, who Wise met as a senior in high school.

A day after beating their football rivals, Wise and his teammates rode to the next town to gloat about the win.

"We went to rub it in at the YMCA dance the next night," Wise said. That's where he and Debbie met. Their night ended when Debbie spotted some of the losing team's players spoiling for a fight. Wise recalls getting chased out of town.

It wouldn't be long until the couple was married. Despite his firefighting dreams, Wise spent years after high school plying his father's trade: selling life insurance.

One day, when he was 24, Wise came home from work to find a dozen job applications spread across the kitchen table. They were for positions at paid fire departments across the east coast.

"I don't want to live with a man who spends his life wondering," Wise said his wife told him.

On June 20, 1978, he got the call from Norfolk. With his wife six months pregnant, they moved hundreds of miles from home, to a place where they didn't know anyone, for him to follow his dream.

Wise isn't sure he ever would have pulled the trigger on his own.

"She gave me that one kick in the pants."

Climbing the ladder

Wise spent eight years fighting fires at Norfolk's Station 9.

He said he wasn't really looking up the ranks -- much less all the way to the top job -- but a snide comment from a superior motivated him once more. He heard secondhand that an officer had said he was too nice and would never be promoted, apparently too much of a buddy to be a boss.

In setting out to prove him wrong, Wise ended up pushing opening a lot of doors for himself. Promotions weren't the goal, Wise said. It was mastering the position he was in, focusing on the task at hand and proving his doubters wrong.

He was named a lieutenant in 1986.

Wise had a lot to learn as he rose through the ranks, starting with transitioning his firefighter's mentality.

"You still tend to believe there isn't anything you can't handle or anything you can't do," he said. "Learning to not just be the firefighter that thinks he can do anything and feel invincible, but be a leader and take that invincible feeling and harness it" was a challenge.

He had to learn to "lead with your voice," which can prove frustrating to someone used to being able to do anything themselves.

He had to project confidence and give direction with the faith that his people could execute.

Watching from afar was still harrowing.

Wise recalls a fire at Pembroke Tower. As crews approached, the heavy smoke was obscuring the balconies. The wind shifted for a moment to reveal the silhouette of a woman on one of the balconies as the building burned.

Nobody was hurt, and the fire was brought under control, but he said he'll never forget that image.

"For a short period of time, we didn't know how it would turn out."

At times, career advancement felt like a punishment. Every promotion was a step further removed from the tight-knit family that is a crew of firefighters, especially when he was named a battalion chief and was no longer working out of a station.

Losing some of that connection was "one of the more disappointing aspects of going up the chain," Wise said. It's like a family member moving away -- still there, but not in arm's reach.

But the further he advanced, the more he learned.

As a firefighter, he'd always known the job and just gotten to work. As a battalion chief, the mindset switches to "When this fails, what is Plan B?" Wise said.

Taking over

Wise became deputy chief in 2002. He jokes that he's "been on call ever since." The chirping of the pager late at night may have occasionally caused a tinge of regret for his wife for laying out those applications all those years ago, he said.

Wise said that after he took the deputy post, it became apparent to him for the first time that he would likely end up in the top job.

Fire Chief Edward Senter left in November 2008 for a job in Chesterfield County. Wise slid into the job as the acting chief, in charge of a department with more employees than there were people in his hometown of less than 500.

It was two years before the job was his in full. He didn't have the groomed resume of some folks who are gunning for the chief's job their whole career, Wise said, and he thinks then-city manager Regina Williams was giving him a chance to prove himself.

If Wise was hoping for an easy trial period, his timing couldn't have been worse. He took over the top job just as the worst recession in generations was hammering local government budgets.

While the budget was being squeezed, Wise said he and his staff were "moving the department forward in ways that didn't necessarily have a price tag," bolstering fitness programs, getting grants to help cover new and improved safety equipment and increasing diversity in hiring.

The department still has a ways to go on that last point: Norfolk employment data shows the Fire-Rescue staff is 79 percent white and 15 percent black in a city that's almost half black.

Pulling the department through the recession in one piece is one of the hardest things he did, and he said he's proud of the teamwork that got them through that tough time.

Wise said he thinks the department's relationship with the public has changed over the past decade.

For example, when EMS responded to a man having a medical emergency while putting up his family's Christmas lights, they went back and finished putting up the lights. The department also does door-to-door smoke alarm installation.

"The culture isn't just about doing the job, it's about taking care of people, and we do that pretty well," Wise said.

The next generation will have plenty of new challenges of its own to tackle -- taller buildings and denser development will make firefighting more difficult and dangerous, while an aging population will strain emergency medical services -- but Wise seems confident the department is in good hands.

As for his own post-retirement plans, Wise seems almost giddy to say he has none.

"My wife has been extremely patient, but I think she has a seven-year honey-do list," he said.

Teaching may be a possibility, but all that's on the agenda for now is spending time with his three grandchildren. That, and a little prayer, Wise said.

"I'll put in some time in on my knees and see what doors open."

___

(c)2019 The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Va.)

Visit The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Va.) at pilotonline.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.