At age 24, Debra J. Jarvis sought to become a volunteer firefighter for the Pike Township Fire Department in Indianapolis, but was rejected “because I was a woman.”
She continued to work in retail management, but devised a plan. “I waited another year and identified some of the problems they had with getting the (calls) answered, because it was an all-volunteer fire department,” she said.
“I went back a year later, in 1978, and said, `You know, let me at least try. I can at least answer the (calls), and you guys aren’t getting the job done,’ ” she said. “So they let me try. The rest is history.”
History indeed. Twenty-two years later, she’s still in the fire service, at the top rungs of the profession as chief of the Oak Brook Fire Department, which might seem ironic to those who gave her that first shot.
“They didn’t think it would last,” she said. “I remember them saying that. They didn’t think I’d like it. . . . I’ve loved it ever since.”
And she’s still setting goals, devising plans, ignoring the naysayers and, over the long run, succeeding.
“If she gets her hook into something, you’d better get out of her way, because she’s going to get there one way or another–over you, around you or through you,” said Arthur Cave, Pike Township deputy fire chief and a longtime colleague and friend who first got to know Jarvis in 1984.
“And I don’t mean that in a bad way,” he added. “She’s very kindhearted, and she wouldn’t hurt a fly. But when she sets her mind on something, she makes sure that she accomplishes it.”
Since taking the helm in Oak Brook in August 1997, Jarvis has won approval from the Oak Brook Village Board to increase full-time staffing, acquired better department technology, upgraded emergency response equipment and increased medical training for firefighters, most of whom are paramedics, and officers.
“She’s been able to step up to some latent issues, such as staffing, equipment and training,” Village Manager Stephen Veitch said. “Staffing hadn’t been on the radar screen for some time.”
To describe Jarvis’ tenacity, Village President Karen M. Bushy noted that the chief was able to convince the Village Board the department needed a new, specially designed vehicle with extrication equipment, a generator and lighting capacity to respond to emergencies, particularly crashes on the toll roads that bisect Oak Brook.
“They had talked about that forever, and it just never got off the dime,” Bushy said. “She just pounded at it until it got into the budget. You know, $300,000 is a little heavy on the budget. But it has proved in several instances to be a godsend.”
Jarvis accomplished the changes in a period destined to be fraught with difficult transitions. At the start of this year, a building commissioner took on duties once handled by the fire chief, as planned when she was hired.
She also took the job two years after the department unionized, and a contract agreement wasn’t reached until March 1999. During that process, Bushy, Veitch and Jarvis all came under personal attacks in the form of anonymous letters. One questioned Jarvis’ leadership skills.
“It was ugly, the first parts of it,” she said. “But those are traditional union tactics that you just learn not to take personally, because that’s what they are. If you’re a fire chief and you take things personally, you’re in big trouble. You can’t do your job. There’s always going to be somebody who doesn’t like a decision that you make.”
Jarvis may need that thick skin at other times, because her philosophy could rub fire service traditionalists the wrong way.
“I’ve always said that if you’re not changing, you’re falling behind, because if you stay the same, the world changes around you, and you move back just by virtue of the fact that you decided to stay the same,” Jarvis said. “So if you aren’t moving forward and changing, you’re falling behind.”
Veitch noted that “in every endeavor and in every organization, there’s often some idea of, `We’ve always done it this way.’ ” Veitch, Cave and Jarvis all said that’s particularly true in the fire service.
“I think she does see herself as an agent for change,” Veitch said. “Her very presence suggests that in many respects. . . . All change carries with it some risk of someone viewing it negatively. Obviously, we’re not immune to that.”
Although many note her presence as a woman in the field of firefighting makes her something of a symbol of change, Jarvis shuns playing that card. She noted she’s often asked about being a female firefighter.
“Invariably, they want to focus on the fact that I’m a woman,” she said. “You know, `What’s it like being a woman?’ I don’t know. I’ve never been a man, so I can’t compare.”
In Jarvis’ career, change and advancement have been two constants. When she started in Pike Township, the department had six full-time firefighters and 60 volunteers. When she left, it had 125 career firefighters.
After three years in the rapidly growing department, she won her first promotion. By 1982, she had received an associate’s degree in fire science technology and was a station officer, and two years later she received a bachelor’s degree in management and was appointed battalion chief.
While climbing the ranks, Jarvis soon found that being a firefighter was more than just a profession. “It’s like a calling,” she said. “It’s not like a job. You have to be called to do this. You become much more dedicated to this line of work, most people do, than the typical career that most people have–probably very much like being a doctor.
“You work together with the people that you serve with. And you feel a family bond, because you risk your life together, plus you work together. It is very, very much like family.
“And, in addition to that, the people who do this type of work have a strong desire to help people, to rescue people when they’re hurt. There aren’t a lot of people who will run into a burning building when everybody else is running out.”
Jarvis also learned about leadership, particularly through a “hallmark incident” in the late 1980s, when she was the supervisor at the scene of a coin laundry gas leak. She ordered an evacuation of the area, which included a playground. At the scene, others were “second-guessing” her orders to evacuate.
“I was just praying that nothing would happen until we got the playground evacuated and the immediate surrounding buildings evacuated, and just as soon as all of those things were done, the building exploded,” she said. “It exploded, and we ended up with multiple little fires on the roofs of several buildings, but because I had staged a lot of equipment there to stand by, it was all handled quickly. . . . Nobody second-guessed me after that.”
“She paid her dues as a firefighter, so she knows a great deal about the science and reality of fighting fires,” Veitch said. “She’s been there, done that.”
In 1990, Jarvis moved to the Lawrence Township Fire Department in Indianapolis to take a job as director of education and safety at the division chief rank. Five years later, she achieved her goal of becoming a chief when she took the top post in Homewood.
“While it was difficult to move away from my family that was in the Indianapolis area, we decided–my husband and I decided together–that this is what God called us to do,” she said. “So we did it. We moved here for me to be fire chief.”
After two years in Homewood, an election changed the makeup and outlook of the Homewood Village Board. Jarvis had been hired to make changes, but the new board was no longer interested in making changes.
“I just decided that if I couldn’t do what the original board hired me to do, it might just be better to resign,” she said. “It changed, and I decided to set sail because it seemed like that’s what I ought to do.”
Impressed by Oak Brook’s aesthetics while also aware of its progressive reputation for fire prevention, she applied for the top Fire Department job when it became available.
She cited as her biggest accomplishment in Oak Brook persuading the Village Board to adopt a plan to hire over three years 11 more full-time firefighter/paramedics to augment the 37 full-timers and 12 paid-on-call personnel it had in 1999.
New hires, in part, will be paid for through a 2 percent telecommunications tax that replaced a 3 percent tax levied only on local telephone service.
“When we hired Debra, that was our intention, that she be able to ratchet up the planning, the intellectual side of firefighting, and she has done a good job of that,” Bushy said.
Jarvis, however, is quick to credit the personnel who work for her, referring to their “great wealth of talent.” She noted that those under her came up with the specifications for the emergency vehicle, which Schaumburg is considering replicating because of its success.
“It was up to me to help them use their talent, which is what any leader’s job is, to facilitate that, and they have blossomed tremendously,” she said. “I am very proud of them.”
Indeed, she said her favorite part of the job “is watching somebody do a good job. That’s what it’s all about. That’s my job.”
The Oak Brook Fire Department’s non-emergency number is 630-990-3040.
DEBRA J. JARVIS
Age: 46.
Title: Oak Brook fire chief.
Education: Associate’s degree in fire science technology, 1982, at Indiana University, Kokomo; bachelor’s degree in management, 1988, Indiana Wesleyan University, Marion; enrolled in master’s degree in leadership studies at Lewis University, Romeoville, expected to graduate in September; Indiana master firefighter certifications in fire service management, instruction, fire prevention, fire/arson investigation, strategy and tactics and aircraft crash rescue; certified as an emergency medical technician in Indiana from 1980 to 1995; recently received first-response to medical emergencies certificate.
Favorite part of job: “Helping people. It’s not just helping people, it’s watching people succeed. . . . My favorite part is watching somebody do a good job.”
Biggest challenge: “Coordinating multiple priorities. That’s probably the hardest part of the job. . . . Quantum physics can be very unpredictable, and leadership can be just as unpredictable. That’s the biggest challenge.”
Advice: “I think the most important thing I tell people to work on is human relations skills, with management skills, because you use them not only on the emergency scene, but you use them in the fire station every single day, with all those changing personalities and priorities and projects that have to be managed.”
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COMMUNITY FOCUS SECTION
Oak Brook & Hinsdale
This is the second of four special sections about Oak Brook and Hinsdale that the Tribune is publishing in 2000.
Part 3, coming Sept. 6, will look at issues in education in Oak Brook and Hinsdale.
If you have any comments or suggestions about this issue or future Community Focus Sections, contact Pam Becker at 312-222-4208.
