HARRY R. CARTER, Ph.D., MIFireE

By now you have probably had the chance to take a look at my daughter’s commentary that appeared on the web last week. I am sure that you can only imagine how much her words affected my wife and I. When we first saw them, it was through a heavy veil of tears. Rare is the time when a person gets to receive such affirmation and praise from such an important person. I shall carry that joy with me through my remaining years on this earth.

Last week was a truly special one for me. It began with Katie’s commentary, passed through my installation as the President of the International Society of Fire Service Instructors (ISFSI), and ended at the doorstep of my 54th birthday. It was a great week by anyone’s standards. But as good as it was, it was just the beginning of something special.

Katie and I spent last week in Baltimore at the Firehouse Expo. Owing to the extensive coverage of Katie’s work on this website, she was sort of a minor celebrity. Someone even took her nametag and added under her name the words "I am Harry Carter’s daughter." She attended several of the seminars and seemed to enjoy the interaction with the other fire people.

However her greatest impact came at an informal bull session in one of downtown Baltimore’s nicer watering holes. A number of us were holding court in a corner of that facility. My dear friend and new First Vice President of ISFSI, Jack Peltier was there also. Assisting him were his sidekicks from the great state of Massachusetts, Bob Haskell from the Otis Air Force Base Fire Department, and Denny Dowd, the retired chief of the Winchendon, Massachusetts Fire Department. As is our way, we were hashing over the great issues of the 21st Century.

Suddenly Bob Haskell leans over the table towards me and says quite seriously, "Harry, I'm having a real problem relating to the new people at the fire academy. Hell, I'm only 56 years old, but it's like I'm from another planet." Of course at that point, Jack chipped in that he seemed to have arrived from another planet a long time ago, and of course the riotous laughter commenced.

"No!," he said, as he leaned across the table. "What the hell can I do to make an impact on these new people."

As I leaned back in my chair, searching for some real sage piece of advise to offer, I caught a glimpse of Katie rolling her eyes, and shaking her head. It was as if I had been given a sign from above. Here were these four long-time veterans of the fire service instructional wars asking each other what to do about young people. Heck, I haven’t really been young since Johnson was the President (Lyndon of course). It hit me like a bolt from the blue.

"Katie," I asked, "Why is it that young people do not listen to older people like us?" Her answer was as simple as it was profound.

"Well Dad," she began, "we don’t listen to you, because you don’t listen to us. And if you do listen to us, many times you do it to be nice, or to humor us. You don’t listen because you already think you know what we need to know."

You could have knocked over the collective beef trust of four fairly substantial men. Was this true? Were we that insensitive? So we asked for a further explanation.

Over the course of the evening Katie explained that she was concerned about joining an organization where you had to wait for years and years before you could do anything. She was also concerned that far too many older people told her to do things, "just because - because that’s they way we’ve always done it." Talk about the apple not falling far from the tree. But more importantly, I realized that I might be like that in certain aspects of my organizational and personal life.

As Katie and I walked back to our hotel, her ideas overflowed with the fervor of an uncapped well. In order that I not miss any, I asked her to write down her thoughts for me. By the middle of the next afternoon, I had six pages of notes from her on how to make the fire service and the International Society of Fire Service Instructors more "user-friendly" for the younger members of the fire service. What a treasure trove of ideas. I will be writing on this for some time to come.

As part of "My View of the Future of ISFSI", speech at the membership meeting on Friday July 27, I vowed to reach out for the younger members of the fire service. I indicated that we were going to create a venue that would actively seek to find new members among the newer members of the fire service. I stated that it was my intention to create an awareness of the importance of reaching people at an early age to make them much more aware of the importance of being a teacher, mentor, and instructor.

Saturday morning July 28 found me chairing my first Board of Director’s meeting as President of ISFSI. A busy morning was spent attending to the many matters involved in creating policy for a member organization. A couple of the actions taken at that meeting must receive instantaneous amplification at this point. I feel that unless we look to the future now, there might not be a good future for us at all. To that end the following actions were taken:

• I called for the creation of a new committee within our organizational structure. It shall be called the Mentoring and Apprenticeship Committee.
• I appointed our youngest Board member, Shane Ray, of Tennessee to be this committee’s chair. Shane is not yet 30 years of age, and is already the Mayor and Fire Chief of his community.
• As a Board we reaffirmed our commitment to the growth of our Student Member category. This has lain dormant for far too many years.

As a Board, we recognized that change must occur, and the sooner the better. I am truly excited about where we are headed. It is has been made painfully obvious to me that we cannot continue to operate as we have in the past. We cannot hope to prosper as an organization if we continue to do business as we always have.

An interesting sideline to the main theme here came when Bob Haskell felt the sudden need to call his son. His son Patrick Haskell is a career firefighter in Wareham Massachusetts. Bob called and said that he wanted to have a long talk with him when he got back. He told Patrick that he wanted to hear more about how he felt on issues. His son replied by asking him the brand of his social refreshments at that current moment. Bob assured his that he was serious, and I am sure such an interaction will occur. The key here is that Katie created one serious convert to her "listen to the young" school of thinking.

Denny Dowd, Jack Peltier and I were the other three serious converts. We urge you to join us, not just in ISFSI’s march to recovery and great success, but look at your own organization, are you listening, but not really listening?

The commentary in this column does not necessarily reflect those of Firehouse.Com, Firehouse Magazine, their employees or parent company Cygnus Business Media. Harry R. Carter, Ph.D., MIFireE, is an internationally known municipal fire protection consultant and contributing editor to Firehouse Magazine. He recently retired as a Battalion Commander with the Newark, New Jersey Fire Department. His commentary appears regularly on Firehouse.Com. For more commentary and information, visit Carter's web site at www.harrycarter.com Harry has published several books available for online ordering, including Firefighting Strategy and Tactics and Management in the Fire Service