WPBFD History

Wilkes won the election by 245 votes despite Pepper's public crusade. In spite of the adverse publicity, the West Palm Beach Fire Department put in a good showing at the Palm Beach County Advanced Life Support competition in April. The team of Brent Braunworth, Chris Brown, Craig Dieringer, and David Nelson took third place in the twelve team event. As one of the top three teams in the county, they won the opportunity to enter the Interna- tional Advanced Life Support competition in Edmonton, Canada. Their ninth place finish in that event was disap- pointing, but they learned that more practice in cold weather emergencies was necessary to win. Team mem- ber Chris Brown received a special honor when he was given the Tacky Tourist Award by his co-workers. Not even a going-away party for former Fire Chief Russell Reese could escape the newspapers. The Palm Beach County Fire Chiefs' Association and Fire Mar- shalls' Association were the focus of attention in Carolyn Susman's Palm Beach Post column on April 18, 1990. The associations were having a party to honor Reese on April 28. Susman asked Lake Worth Fire Chief Al Lewis if there had been any objections to giving a party for a chief that had been fired for making racist remarks. He answered, "No. This has the support of both associations. It's not a headline or a political statement." The Neighborhood Fire Marshall Program began in May of 1990. Working closely with neighborhood groups, the program would train volunteer fire marshals to identify and report fire hazards that might be present in their area of the city. The volunteers would also spread word about the importance of smoke detectors and en- courage citizens to take free courses that were available in fire safety, first aid, and CPR. Headlines in the Local News section of the Palm Beach Post on June 6, 1990, threw another curve into the racial issue that had surfaced six months before. The United States Justice Department was investigating the West Palm Beach Fire and Police Department's hiring practices to see if reverse discrimination had taken place. Now there were two ongoing investigations of the fire department. Interim Fire Chief Donald P. Widing had his hands full throughout the investigations. Television and news- papers were always looking for a story, the Justice De- partment was conducting interviews of its own, the fire- fighters were on edge, and there were disagreements with city officials. Widing finally was able to formulate a mission state- ment for the fire department as the ill winds blew. A committee made up of Mike Carsillo, James Harmon, Jo Ann Lester, Nate McCray, George Schurter, and Richard Roberts worked out the following:

Department Investigating Committee” to “investigate the presence of race, ethnic origin and gender discrimination within the West Palm Beach Fire Department in the prac- tices of hiring, training, promoting, demoting, assigning, deploying, stationing, and supervising departmental per- sonnel.” The city would pay for all expenses incurred by the committee and the committee's report was to be sub- mitted to the city manager by July 31, 1990. A Palm Beach Post article published March 4, 1990, by Staff Writer Angela Bradbury shed new light on the controversy. She had listened to the tapes of the city manager's investigation of January 26 and wrote: Several people interviewed said the anony- mous letter was written by two battalion chiefs whose disenchantment with Reese had little to do with disparaging remarks against minorities or women. The subsequent uproar and accusa- tions about rampant discrimination in the fire department are completely off base, they said. In fact, the two battalion chiefs bore a long- standing grudge against Reese, who had de- moted one and clashed with both. On the verge of retirement, they saw a way to exact revenge. It was business as usual for the fire department on Sunday afternoon, March 11, 1990. An arsonist used a flammable liquid to start a fire in an apartment building located at 3206 Broadway. More than twenty occupants escaped without injury as flames raced through the old two-story frame-stucco structure. On March 13, 1990, City Manager Schutta an- nounced the names of those who would serve on the in- vestigating committee: Ms. Willa Fearrington, Esq., Mr. Edmund Gonzalez, Ms. Dorothy Gay of the NAACP, Mr. Rand Hoch, Esq., Mr. Percy Lee of the Urban League, and Mr. Roderick Stevens. March 13 was also election day. Pat Pepper had been in a heated campaign with the "grande dame" of West Palm Beach politics, Helen Wilkes, who had been a commissioner and mayor in the 1970s and early 1980s. Neither candidate was able to win a majority of the vote in the general election, so a runoff on March 27 was nec- essary. City Clerk Agnes Hayhurst received numerous com- plaints of improper campaigning on the day of the runoff. One of the complaints involved Pepper campaign signs on the side of a city fire truck. The truck, Old 42, was now the property of the Fraternal Order of Firefighters, but still had West Palm Beach lettering on the side. Union President Dennis Hashagen had borrowed the vehicle to use as a campaign platform. Some firefighters wondered why the union was supporting Pepper in the first place after her apparent attack on the fire department. Helen

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