08:55 AM CDT on Monday, May 29, 2006

By DONNA FIELDER / Denton Record-Chronicle

With 17 years in the fire service that includes a background in successfully recruiting minorities, Quentin Brown brings an abundance of qualifications to his new job as recruiting management analyst at the Denton Fire Department.

Not the least of these, he’s the first to point out, is the color of his skin.

“Nothing sells better than me showing up.” Brown said. “I’m black. They see me here at the fire department and it shows them they can be here, too. They can see me and visualize themselves being a firefighter.”

Despite years of energetically recruiting at universities, local churches and events and on radio advertisements, the Denton Fire Department still has no black firefighters. Fire officials have been criticized, but point out that civil service rules and comparative pay scales have hampered their efforts.

Brown, 43, is here to change all that, and he’s excited about it.

“A pessimist would say, ‘Well, you’re just their little token,’” Brown said. “That’s not the way I feel about it. I’m here because I can help. I want people to know I’m here. I want it to be so busy in here that they have to put more chairs in the waiting area.”

Denton Fire Chief Ross Chadwick said the city is fortunate to hire a person with the experience and expertise Brown brings.

“We feel that Quentin will be a tremendous asset to the Denton Fire Department and especially the community of Denton,” Chadwick said.

Civil Service rules govern hiring and promotions for firefighters, so that promotions must come from within the department. The new recruitment job that Brown holds was created as a civilian position that doesn’t fall under civil service rules.

Brown worked as a basketball coach and a 911 communications officer before joining the New Orleans Fire Department. He attended Delgado Community College majoring in fire protection/technology, and graduated from the Carl Holmes-Executive Development Institute on the Dillard University campus, with an accreditation in executive fire service management.

When the fire department has firefighter openings, applicants must score highest on a written test and pass a tough physical agility test. For the past several years, in order to save money and time on training, Denton also has required that an applicant already be a certified or certifiable firefighter. (A certifiable firefighter meets all the training requirements and qualifications but is not a sworn officer in any department.)

Brown says his job is to educate people early in life to the possibilities of firefighting as a career.

He would like to work with the school district to implement a firefighting program — much like current trade-oriented programs such as health care, hairdressing and auto repair classes — to prepare them for a career in the fire service.

“You have to be certified or certifiable to be hired now. If you haven’t ever considered it as a job opportunity, why would you go and get the certification?” he said. “We need to educate people. My thing is fostering the future.”

In a way, Denton can thank Hurricane Katrina for its new employee. Brown spent 13 years with the New Orleans Fire Department. For the past few years he had thought about moving to some other part of the country, but he would lose rank and seniority if he hired on at another fire department.

Several years ago, he was asked to take over recruiting for the Louisiana department. New Orleans had no female firefighters, he said, and he was charged with recruiting women especially, but also other minority firefighters.

He didn’t just recruit them. He helped them. He set up lesson plans so that applicants could study for the rigorous written test. He worked with women to develop the upper body strength needed for physical requirements like dragging heavy hoses.

Within three years, Brown’s efforts added 10 women and 150 African Americans to the department, he said.

Then he was promoted, which meant a move back to a neighborhood station. Last August he was captain of Engine 21, Second Platoon, when hurricane warnings began. He’d been through a lot of them, but this one made him really uneasy, he said. He insisted that his wife and children, his mother and sister and other extended family members travel to the Plano area to stay with his aunt.

He stayed in New Orleans. Ten firefighters and three captains, constituting all three shifts working at his station, moved all their apparatus to the New Orleans Fairgrounds, which was on higher ground than the station, to work the storm. Afterward, the station was under more than five feet of water.

At the fairgrounds, they were cut off from the rest of the city by water. They had no communication with their commanders and didn’t see a police officer for the first three days, Brown remembers. They were on their own and they used what they had, including a commandeered boat, to rescue people in the surrounding area.

“You find out what your guys are made of,” he said. “You find out what you are made of.”

After more than a week, the firefighters themselves had to be rescued by helicopter.

Only then, Brown said, did he understand what had happened to the city he was born in. He was given a week of leave and he came to North Texas to be with his family. They talked it over. They didn’t want to go home.

Mrs. Brown is in the banking industry, and she soon found a job in the area. Brown had to go back to work at the fire station in New Orleans, but he contacted friends in this area and told them he needed a job here.

He learned about the Denton position. It was a job that seemed made for him.

And not only does he have qualifications, he said; he has connections.

Brown was president of the Black Association of New Orleans Fire Fighters, which is affiliated with the International Association of Black Professional Fire Fighters. He isn’t the only New Orleans firefighter looking to leave the department, he said. He’s already had numerous requests from certified firefighters there anxious to relocate.

He misses the day-to-day life of a firefighter, he said. He knew from the time he was 3 years old and saw firefighters charging into a burning building that he wanted to be one. He hopes to teach at the new fire and police training center, he said, and he knows that bringing good firefighters to the department will give him satisfaction.

“I love the fire service,” Brown said. “I’m not going far from it. Not for long.”

DONNA FIELDER can be reached at 940-566-6885. Her e-mail address is dfielder@dentonrc.com.