When a high school friend invited Jay Reardon to an Evergreen Park (Ill.) Fire Department cadet meeting one night in 1966, no one could have known that it would spark an interest that would lead to an impressive military, fire and emergency service career spanning more than 30 years.

“I found that I enjoyed it, I understood it,” Reardon says of his formative experience in the south Chicago suburb. “The firefighters were really involved and invested in young people, so it was really positive and part of my growing-up experience.”

Reardon, Fire Chief Magazine's 2002 Career Fire Chief of the Year, currently serves as chief of the Northbrook (Ill.) Fire Department, a position he has held since 1994. Among his accomplishments, are his position as executive board president of Mutual Aid Box Alarm System, his appointment by Illinois Gov. George Ryan to serve on the 2000 Blue Ribbon Panel for Fire Service Issues and statewide Terrorism Preparedness Task Force, and his service in the Air Force on active and reserve status for 25 years. He currently serves as officer in charge of readiness for 22nd Air Force at Dobbins Air Force Base in Georgia. He is second vice president of the Illinois Fire Chiefs Association and serves as its representative to the Great Lakes Division Board of the International Association of Fire Chiefs. He also was selected as Illinois Fire Chief of the Year by his peers in the group.

Early stepping stones

When Reardon was just out of high school and after a lackluster first semester of community college, his father refused to continue to put up tuition money and encouraged his son to enlist in the Vietnam-era U.S. Air Force, which Reardon says was a turning point in his life at the age of 18. “I began to believe in me. If I applied myself, there were a lot of things that I could get done,” he says. “I think that was the big breakthrough in my life. That made me believe that if I wanted something bad enough, I could do it. It just means working hard and applying yourself and focussing.”

After his stint in the Air Force, Reardon enrolled in the Southern Illinois University Fire Science Management Program, was married, became a father and found work as a firefighter/paramedic at the Hoffman Estates (Ill.) Fire Department. Although he worked his way up to captain shift commander, Reardon says the department leadership frustrated him. “I just felt like I was spinning my wheels to try to make a difference,” he says.

At 28, Reardon moved his wife, son and daughter to Portage, Mich., to became the first outside assistant fire chief, and later chief of the Portage Fire Department, a place he says had lots of risk and potential fire problems. “It was an interesting experience walking into a room where you had individuals who varied in age from their early 60s to 21,” he recalls. “All of a sudden I'm their boss. I kind of became the change-agent chief to bring the pendulum back to center.”

After eight years, Reardon was recruited to Collier County, Fla., as emergency services administrator. Among his other duties, he worked in a group studying the possible consolidation of independent fire districts in the area. “It was a real experience in dealing with human dynamics and process and politics, as well as developing my professional skills and my tolerance because it was a politically charged event,” he says. Although the consolidation never was approved, Reardon says he learned a powerful lesson from the experience. “If consolidation is going to happen, there has to be a political commitment before you even begin the dialogue with professionals or the opinions of others that are involved,” he says.

With frustration about the consolidation issue coming to a head, Reardon decided to cut his losses, quit the job and move on. “Florida stopped being fun, it became pushing a pile of paper from here to there,” he says. “When I walked in that night and I looked at my wife and she said ‘What's new?’ I said ‘I quit.’ The best thing my wife said to me after I told her was ‘Within four days you became yourself again.’”

With his background as a non-commissioned and commissioned officer in the Air Force, Reardon then took advantage of an opportunity to work for the Secretary of Defense office for a year converting Homestead (Fla.) Air Base to a civilian-use facility for the local government. “That was a really good experience. It built on my ability to understand complex processes and mobilization of resources during contingency events,” he says.

Coming home

In 1994 Reardon was recruited as chief of the Northbrook Fire Department and jumped at the chance to return to the Chicago area, a decision he doesn't regret. “Since I've been here, my opinion is that this is the best place I've ever worked,” he says. “We've got elected officials who truly care and want to do what's right and aren't afraid to hear ugly things and try to deal with it.”

During his tenure at Northbrook, Reardon has overseen several improvements in the department's services. “We went from an ISO Class 5 to an ISO Class 2 and we're not far from an ISO Class 1,” he says. “We've built new stations, replaced every piece of major firefighting apparatus. We've added personnel, we've added paramedic transport ambulances. We've expanded to a full service organization with a fire prevention bureau that does all the things that a fire prevention bureau does, plus more. Plus, we're working on accreditation right now.”

Reardon attributes the department's successes to supportive city government. “I did a count once, I'm at 12 city managers in my career,” he said. “This guy I work for here, John Novinson, is the best city manager I've ever worked for. You know where he's coming from, there's a real trust. He'll tell you straightforward what he believes, but he'll allow you to argue the point and he will change his opinion if you convince him. You can't ask for anything more fair and equitable than that.”

In the past few years, the Northbrook department has experienced the deaths of three members, including an assistant chief who was killed in an explosion. Reardon says department members are now closer than ever. “It brought our organization to a new level. A term rolled out of it from one of our guys who has become our internal motivator, he said, ‘We are family through the toughest times.’ It brought new understanding to one another. It brought labor and management together like it's never been before. It really brought true meaning that there are commonalities that we have to take care of one another, we are a family.

“My job as chief is to support the people in this organization, to support those who need help when it's their time of need. I don't have to be the band leader, I don't have to be at the front of the line, but I have to be there to let people know it's ok,” Reardon says.

Community service

Reardon says his department members have extended their support of one another to the community; they often go outside of their way to help those in need.

“I'm very much a supporter of customer service,” he says. “One of our district chiefs, who just retired and took a job as a chief in a town right down the street, said once in a meeting, ‘Organizationally we should be the place that when somebody has a problem and they don't know what to do, their last phone call should be to us because they know we're going to solve it.’ Even if it's not ours to worry about, maybe we can cut through the bureaucracy and the red tape, maybe we can point them in the right direction. And our people, I believe, have embraced it.”

Reardon cites simple acts such as carrying an elderly couple's luggage to their fifth-floor condominium as signs his department is truly devoted to the community. “Show me where it says that in the job description,” he says. “The bottom line is that those folks needed help and our people extended it.”

Good departments must be critical of themselves to keep improving, according to Reardon. “We have tons of success stories, tell me the ones where we've failed. Tell me where we didn't deliver because we're going to learn from those,” he says. “I want to know where we didn't make a difference, where we made a mistake, and learn from that. Not from a standpoint punitively, but from a standpoint of organizationally, systemically and from the culture, where did we miss the opportunity?”

MABAS

Stepping outside the Northbrook's confines, Reardon is active in statewide disaster planning, domestic terrorism preparedness and incident management as the executive board president of Mutual Aid Box Alarm System for the last three years. MABAS is a voluntary mutual aid system linking 750 Illinois fire departments with more than 25,000 firefighters and officers. Ed. See “Massive undertaking” at <www.firechief.com>]. Reardon was also instrumental in the development and construction of a state-of-the art fire/EMS regional emergency dispatch center.

“People look to the fire service to solve their problems. We've always stood up to that challenge. We are in the contingency business. Everyday we routinely go to incidents that no one else can figure out, and we're expected to figure it out,” he says. “Now domestic terrorism, a whole new set of challenges — who else is going to do it if the local fire department doesn't? We have the people, we have the infrastructure, we have the equipment, we have the ability, now we just need additional training and additional equipment and good coordination and sound leadership.

“We're going to be dealt cards that are no-win situations and we're going to have to evaluate our aggressiveness, because aggressiveness with the new challenges could be the worst thing in the world to exercise. That's our newest challenge, it's the most important thing on our plate right now [along with] other things that feed to it. The FIRE Act, the SAFER Act, the economy is not doing well, local budgets to fire departments are being reduced, so how do you do the balancing act between local revenues being reduced with increased challenges on the other side? The equipment you need to do it with, a lot of it is pretty expensive and if you don't share it, how are we going to get through this?” he asks.

Emphasis on education

Reardon puts a high value on training and education. Besides earning his bachelor's degree, he graduated from Western Michigan University with a master's in public administration. “If you don't have a degree, the rest of society doesn't know how to catalog you, but if you have a bachelor's or a master's degree, that's accepted universally regardless of the profession or the discipline you're dealing with.” Reardon was one of eight fire officials nationwide selected for the prestigious Harvard University Fire Executive Fellowship Program and is planning to attend in February.

Remembering his days as an Evergreen Park cadet, Reardon is developing a similar program for new high school graduates, as well as a program where captains ride in one of the command cars and are mentored and developed to be district chiefs. The district chiefs are required to work in administration in the bureau so that they become familiar with those job responsibilities. “Someday I'm going to leave and I want to make sure we have enough people prepared, and it becomes one heck of a hard decision for my village manager to pick a new chief because he's got a basket full of qualified applicants,” he says.

As someone who's climbed the rungs of the fire service career ladder, Reardon has some advice for up and comers, “Every day's an assessment center. Doing well one day when you took a written test doesn't mean a whole lot. What do you invest in yourself? If you don't, nobody else is going to invest in you.

“Being a good chief means a lot of work. I get short tempered with other chiefs who don't work and they know that,” he says. “I don't have a whole lot of tolerance for that. You can make a difference inside your organization, which will in turn make a difference outside your organization. When this job stops being fun, and that's what happened in Florida, I don't want to do it anymore.”