During the difficult process of choosing the 20 Legacies honorees, we had to pass over any number of influential fire service leaders from the past century. What follows is our tribute to a small, select group of individuals who, although they didn't make the very top list, are more than worthy of recognition. Our regular series of Legacies profiles will resume next month.

— Scott Baltic, Editor

Paul N. "Red" Adair (1915– )

Not everyone gets to be a technical advisor for a movie based on his career, with John Wayne playing the lead role. But that's exactly what happened to Red Adair with the 1968 movie Hellfighters.

Born near Houston, Adair dropped out of high school to help support his seven brothers and sisters. Following various jobs and service in an Army ordnance-disposal unit, he returned to Houston and worked for Myron Kinley, the original pioneer of oil-well fires and blowout control.

In 1959, Adair formed the Red Adair Co. Inc., which pioneered wild well control techniques and equipment. The company averaged over 40 oil-well fires and blowouts a year, inland and offshore, throughout the world.

In 1972, Adair formed the Red Adair Service and Marine Co. to design, sell and lease special firefighting equipment essential in controlling oil-well fires. Some of the well-known fires extinguished by Adair and his crews were the 1962 "Devil's Cigarette Lighter" in the Sahara Desert; the 1970 offshore blow at Bay Marchand, La.; the Bravo offshore blowout in the North Sea; and the 1988 Piper Alpha disaster.

Perhaps Adair's greatest accomplishment was in 1991 following the Gulf War, during which retreating Iraqi troops ignited hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells. Cranes, dozers and backhoes were needed for debris removal and site preparation. In addition, oil pipelines had to be reversed to carry an estimated 1.5 billion gallons of saltwater from the Persian Gulf back to the oilfields for firefighting.

Adair met with President Bush, who pledged his support. Equipment began arriving in Kuwait in July, and by October, 542 wells had been killed. The final well was extinguished ceremoniously on Nov. 6, 1991, by the Emir of Kuwait. Adair was very proud of his accomplishments, and extremely thankful that he and his men returned home safely.

— Charlie Rule

Charles Hurst Fox (1860–1950)

The first steam pumper with an integral hose bed. An automatic valve to control pump discharge pressure. The first gasoline-powered piston pumper. It's hard to imagine today's fire service without these innovations, yet they all sprang from the mind of Charles Hurst Fox (with a little help from his peers).

The illegitimate son of Catherine Hurst and an unknown Mr. Fox, Charles was born in Cincinnati, where he was raised by his mother's father, a fire captain. Fox joined the local department when he was 19, first as a stoker and then as a steam engineer, eventually becoming department architect in 1887.

Fox eventually resigned to accept a position at the Ahrens Manufacturing Co., owned by the father of his fiancee. He worked his way up in the company, and in 1893 he conceived and built the first steam pumper with an integral hose bed.

As Ahrens Manufacturing became the American Fire Engine Co., Fox continued to design and patent apparatus innovations. By World War I, the majority of steamers incorporated features covered by one or more of his patents, making him a wealthy man.

Following some consolidations and gyrations in the apparatus industry, Fox and his father-in-law formed what would become the Ahrens-Fox Fire Engine Co. In 1911, the company manufactured the first gasoline-powered piston pumper.

Among the first to debunk the extinguishing claims of soda-acid solutions, Fox introduced the first plain-water booster tank. Never patented, the now-standard booster tank is probably his greatest contribution to modern fire protection.

For the next two decades, Fox continued to advance the state of the art in fire suppression, earning 29 patents in total. Until his death, he was an active member of technical societies, as well as an honorary member of the IAFC.

— Kevin Daniels

Harold E. Nelson, P.E. (1929– )

Harold E. "Bud" Nelson, P.E., is arguably the most influential fire protection engineer of the 20th century. As the General Services Administration's chief fire protection engineer, he pioneered the systems-concept approach to fire safety and applied this approach to many gsa buildings around the country, the most notable example being the Federal Office Building in Seattle. Through all his innovative work at gsa, he worked closely with the local fire service to ensure that the concepts would be implemented in a way that served the needs of the community and the fire service over the lifetime of a building.

Later, Nelson moved to the Center for Fire Research at the National Institute for Standards and Technology. There, he developed fpe tool, the most widely used fire modeling program ever developed. At the same time, Nelson was heavily involved in bringing fire modeling and scientific methods to fire investigation. His reports on fire incidents, both large and small, have provided benchmarks for the fire investigation community.

After retiring from nist, Nelson joined Hughes Associates Inc. in Baltimore, where he continues his work in fire investigation and fire modeling. In particular, he has been working to include fire growth modeling based on bench-scale fire test methods in fire analysis.

Through all this time, Nelson's commitment to service to the fire community has inspired a whole generation. The Society of Fire Protection Engineers honored him by naming their service award after him.

— Craig Beyler