Rebecca Denlinger - First woman Department Chief in Georgia.

Nish (Nishiyama) Willis - Atlanta Deputy Fire Chief

Rosemary Cloud - Nation's first African-American female fire chief

Fiery Women

Battling Black Smoke and Scorching Flames Is Just the Beginning

By Mickey Goodman

    Fire was not the only foe of women who pioneered the firefighting profession. When Rebecca Denlinger, Rosemary Cloud and Nish (Nishiyama) Willis became firefighters in the late ’70s and early ’80s, not only did they battle fires, resentful male firefighters and their wives, they met an unlikely obstacle — the lack of clothing designed to fit a woman’s smaller frame. Despite the challenges, they broke through countless barriers to rise to the top. Denlinger is the Cobb County Fire and Emergency Services Chief. Cloud became the nation’s first black female fire chief when she took the helm in East Point, and Willis is the Atlanta Deputy Fire Chief.
     Each recalls those early clothing challenges. “I used to crawl through fires because my boots were so big they kept falling off,” Willis said. “The coat came below my knees, and the gloves were so big I had to wear my rappelling gloves underneath to keep them on.”

    Denlinger had a near-death experience. “When I first started out, the Level A suits (moon suits that contain an air supply) were not as efficient as they are today,” Denlinger said. “The guys would wrap duct tape between the sleeves and the gloves and the legs and the boots, but I couldn’t get in or out of the suit alone.”
     During a particularly hazardous fire, her air system went out. Without the dexterity to remove her headgear, she couldn’t get it off. Fortunately, an experienced firefighter heard her distress call and dashed into the intense fire to cut her loose. “It was close,” she said. “I was about out of air.”
     Cloud can still “feel” those raw places where the oversized boots rubbed against her legs and ankles. “We just made do,” she said. But the biggest challenge was that everything she did was under a microscope. “If I made a mistake, it was like national news, a story to be told to the entire battalion. If a guy made a mistake, it was kept in the unit.”
     Why do these gutsy women want to crawl on their hands and knees in temperatures up to 1,700 degrees while dragging a fully charged hose to pull victims out of raging fires? “Our greatest gift is helping people and watching the expression of relief and comfort once they are safe,” Cloud said simply.
It’s also the rush of adrenaline that excites them. “I was always a tomboy and thought being a firefighter sounded like a blast,” Denlinger said. After more than 20 years, she still feels the same.
    “It’s the thrill of riding down the road with the lights on and the sirens screaming, the rush of rappelling,” Willis said. “We put grandma back in bed when she falls out, do high rise and technical rescues and fight fires. It’s a great job if you like helping people.”

Breaking Down Barricades
     Denlinger has broken through so many barriers, it’s difficult to keep track. In 1977, she was the first female firefighter in Cobb County. Another woman was hired three years later, and three more came aboard in 1989. “They carefully spread us all over the county,” she said. “I was captain before they put two women together at the same station.”
     David Hilton, retired chief of the Cobb Fire Department, hired Denlinger. But he wasn’t always so progressive. Two months before she applied, a woman came to his office and said, “I want to be a firefighter.” He replied jokingly, “Not over my dead body.” The woman took it very seriously. She filed — and won — a lawsuit for discrimination in the amount of $1,500. “I never saw her again,” he said. “She was going from county to county making a living off of the lawsuits.”
     The sting of the lawsuit was fresh in his mind when Denlinger breezed through the difficult mental and physical tests. “She did everything the men did,” he said. “From that point on, I was fine with hiring female firefighters.”
     Her hiring was not without incident. Hilton got flack from the battalion chiefs in charge of training. “He said, ‘Young lady, can you slide down that snorkel (a crane with a bucket on the end)?’ She looked him in the eye and said, ‘I can climb back up it too.’ After that, he never complained again,” Hilton laughed. “One of the keys to her success has been that she has always done the same things as the men and excelled.”
Her first assignment was at Station 1 in Mableton where she anticipated challenges from male firefighters. What she wasn’t prepared for was the attacks from their wives. “A few asked Senator Sam Nunn to pass a law prohibiting women from the profession,” she said. “One firefighter told me not to answer the phone when he was on duty and to hide if his wife dropped in.” One engineer even resigned because Hilton refused to transfer him at the behest of his wife.
     Gradually, Denlinger gained their respect and worked her way up the ranks from firefighter to engineer, lieutenant to captain, battalion chief to colonel. In 1997, she became the first woman department chief in Georgia, heading the largest woman-led agency in the nation at the time.
Even today, women face multiple challenges. One is staying fit and maintaining upper body strength, which is harder for women than men. The weight of the suit alone is daunting. Another is finding new ways to lift with their shoulders and legs rather than their arms. A third is to continue learning. “Cobb County has a reimbursement program, and since I went back to college, the number of other firefighters returning has quadrupled,” Denlinger said proudly.
     A familiar face on the national scene, Denlinger is active in numerous firefighting associations and has been honored with a host of awards. She is most proud of those given by her peers: the Silver Eagle and Golden Goose awards for outstanding leadership and teamwork. In 2004, she was elected chair of the Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Section of the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) and the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). She’s also served as a fire service representative on the Georgia Homeland Security Task Force since 2001.

Just One of the Guys
    “When we started out, Becky and I pretty much just did our jobs and worked for people who gave us an opportunity to be part of the team,” Willis explained matter-of-factly. She was the first woman to go through Florida State Fire College, and they didn’t let her forget it. “They made me do everything twice while the men rested,” she said. “They didn’t want me to make it. Finally they just gave up.”
     Willis began her career in LaGrange, but decided there would be more opportunities in Atlanta. Her assessment was right. At first, she dealt with a lot of kidding from fellow firefighters who told visitors she was an Eagle Scout working on her badge. Even though the guys were unwilling to admit it publicly, they took her under their wing and taught her, she said. “When I made driver, I became the first woman on the hazardous materials squad. My captain cut me no slack, but gave me the opportunity.” Like Denlinger, she worked her way up through the ranks to become the first female officer in the city of Atlanta. Today, women number only 35 out of 800. A mere four are officers.
     Like others in her ranks, she has a dozen “war stories.” One sticks in her mind. Responding to a fire behind the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, she and three others were trying to prevent the flames from spreading. Suddenly, there was a large explosion and the quartet was trapped. “We couldn’t get out because the building had burglar bars, but we kept our cool and used the Jaws of Life to break through,” she said. “Once we were safely outside, one of the men grudgingly admitted, ‘She must be all right. She didn’t scream or cry.’ I thought, ‘Oh great. I had to almost die in a fire to get respect,’ ” Willis laughed. “My captain Gerry Rusinski called me his ‘death partner,’ but we always got out.”

Earning Everyone’s Respect
     Cloud’s most harrowing experiences came at the beginning of her career in 1980. “At one really bad fire, I needed to help the driver connect the hose that supplied sufficient water for the firefighters in the two-story building,” she recalled. “When we were finished, the driver saw the fear in my eyes and said, ‘You don’t have to go in.’ But I knew that this decision would follow me in my career.” With her heart thumping, she entered the engulfed building, the butterflies vanishing as soon as she stepped inside.
    “After the fire was under control, we were resting up when a battalion chief began admonishing me for not actively participating,” she said. “The driver came to my defense and told him, ‘Cloud has been helping all day.’ ” With his acceptance, respect came from others.
     Cloud set her sights high early on and worked her way up through the ranks. Prior to being tapped to lead the East Point department, she headed the unit responsible for providing fire and medical emergency protection at Hartsfield Jackson International Airport, the nation’s largest. Today, she must meet the needs of politicians, including the mayor, city council members and her city manager boss, as well as members of the community and the city’s firefighters.
     Becoming the nation’s first African-American female fire chief “is much bigger than me,” she said. “It has affected many more people than I could have imagined.” Five hundred people from around the country attended her historic installation, many of them strangers. “It really touched me,” she said.
She’s also been honored as the International Association of Black Professional Firefighters Fire Chief of the Year. She was also one of Black Enterprise
Magazine’s Five Phenomenal Women and received the City of East Point’s Outstanding Leadership Award.

Holding the Line
     Like many other professions, firefighting continues to be dominated by males, particularly at the highest level. And despite the substantial strides of these pioneers, it remains tough for any woman to prove she can do the job. To reach the pinnacle, they have to work twice as hard. Denlinger, Cloud and Willis are the epitome of what women with determination can accomplish. “Regardless of career choice, if you put your heart, mind and back into a career, it will work for you,” Willis said. “There’s no luck about it.”