At an age when most boys were playing sandlot baseball or trying to score Led Zeppelin tickets, Phil Little was chasing firetrucks.
“I was 14 years old, wearing fire gear, pulling hose at fires, and I just loved it!” the now-45-year-old facilities manager said. “We went to a lot of fires, we had fire radios wired throughout the whole house. It was an exciting thing.”
Little is part of a unique subculture: the Chicago Fire Fan. Their motivations vary, but Fire Fans all have a sometimes odd, often altruistic dedication to the fire service, a specific fire department or their local firehouse.
Most fans can quote details about famous Chicago fires, such as the 1934 stockyards fire or the recent LaSalle Bank fire, the way others cite favorite sports stats.
They keep fire radio scanners playing in their rec rooms as background noise. They spend hours tending memorabilia collections or restoring antique fire apparatus. In very rare but very real instances, fans pull double-duty as pyromaniacs. In the 1970s and 1980s, one notorious fan would stop by West Side firehouses to drink coffee in the early evening, then would start fires on back porches later at night.
Currently, 10 or 20 die-hard Fire Fans show up at major fire scenes to take photos and shoot videos, the best of which they sell to newspapers and TV stations.
Photography is what led Alan Jacobs to the firehouse. In 2002 Jacobs took a few shots of firefighters working at a blaze near his Uptown home. The photos turned out great, and the firefighters invited him over for lunch. Jacobs has since secured permission to ride on fire rigs throughout the city to take photos.
“I’m sitting there and I feel like I’m 12 years old. . . . I hear sirens and I think, I’m riding on the fire engine!” the 69-year-old retired psychotherapist said. “And all of a sudden the fire gear goes on, they turn on their air tanks, these guys are going to work. And I think, that’s the end of being 12 again, there’s some serious business going on here.”
That serious business intrigues most Fire Fans.
“Fire Fans truly have a fascination with the work of firefighters and paramedics,” said Rev. Tom Mulcrone, Chicago Fire Department chaplain. “Some are in it for the camaraderie, for some it’s a form of male bonding, and some wanted to be firemen and couldn’t pass the test. So hanging around the firehouse is the next best thing.”
Hands-on help
Many Fire Fans used to sleep over at firehouses, ride on fire engines, and even run into a burning building on occasion. An extra-alarm fire in the 1970s changed that. John Divita recalls dozens of Fire Fans pitching in and doing freelance firefighting work at a call near Irving Park Road and Western Avenue.
“The chief fire marshal saw this and that got his dander up,” Divita said. “He said that if he saw any Fire Fans working, he’d have them arrested for impersonating a fireman.”
Divita, who at 66 is an elder statesman in the subculture, used to pitch in at fires regularly. He stopped after the crackdown but stays involved in other ways. Divita has belonged to the 5-11 Club of Chicago, an organized group of Fire Fans, since 1954 and currently serves as the club’s president.
The 5-11 Club, named for the CFD’s highest level of emergency response, staffs a canteen that serves coffee and snacks to firefighters at extra-alarm fires. The club has a Web site and newsletter that feature major Chicago fires and also sponsors an annual swap meet where Fire Fans can trade souvenirs and stories.
Divita, who owns a communications installation company, admits that his duties sometimes get in the way of his “real” job. “Many a time I was at a fire all night, went home, slept for an hour and a half, then I’d get up and go to work,” he said.
Since the crackdown, Fire Fans have adjusted their roles.
“They’re not Fire Fans for the action anymore so much as the history and tradition,” Mulcrone said.
In 1997, Little founded the Fire Museum of Greater Chicago, which maintains thousands of photos and other artifacts. Much of the material came from Little’s father, Fire Fan Ken Little.
The lure of history
When the elder Little started his career in 1957, “there were six firehouses that had been active on the night of the Great Chicago Fire,” the 71-year-old retired fire alarm operator said. “There was a lot of history there, and that really attracted me.”
Little started taking photographs of every city firehouse, eventually collecting several hundred pictures. Since retiring in 1991, he and Rev. John McNalis, a fellow Fire Fan, compiled the photos and related information into a massive four-volume work, “History of Chicago Fire Houses” (available through the Fire Museum of Great Chicago; 877-225-7491).
For Jacobs, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks sparked an idea to document what it means to be a firefighter.
“I realized the public really doesn’t know what firefighters do, and 9/11 really necessitated an explanation,” he said.
Jacobs has since spent dozens of 24-hour shifts at firehouses throughout the city and has taken more than 12,000 pictures of firefighters training, working and going through daily routines. He plans to turn the photos and accompanying explanations into a book. Fortunately, Jacobs’ wife says she understands his passion.
An understanding spouse
“I’ve never had a problem with him spending time at the firehouses,” Krysia Jacobs said. Although she has never gotten into the whole Fire Fan scene herself, she has tagged along with her husband on a couple different occasions. “The firefighters treated us both extremely well,” she said. “There was a nice sense of brotherhood.”
Alone among Fire Fans, Jacobs has secured permission to ride along with any fire company in the city to complete his photo project. As a therapist, he understands the thrill.
“I don’t deny that I get off on it–that’s what Fans do,” he said. “I’m supposed to be an intellectual, but for me, trains, horses, baseball and fire engines have always just revved me up.”
Most Fire Fans tend to be male, white and middle-aged. That makes Keith Thornton, a 16-year-old African-American high school student, something of a surprise.
“My relatives say it all started at the age of 2,” Thornton said. “I would run to the window when I heard a siren nearby, and anytime I passed a firehouse, I would run up to the door and peek inside.”
When he was 13, Thornton wrote a letter asking if he could learn more about the fire service. Within two weeks, his local firehouse in Austin invited him over, and Thornton has been a regular there ever since.
The Prosser Career Academy sophomore fulfills his high school community-service requirement by helping out local firehouses and has started a Web page and a Yahoo! Newsgroup dedicated to the CFD.
“The guys at every firehouse I’ve been to are mostly white, and they all accepted me regardless of my race,” said Thornton, who hopes to become a Chicago firefighter when he grows up. “One guy, an Irish-American firefighter, took me under his wing and taught me a lot, and to this day I think of him as a godfather. . . . I consider the Chicago Fire Department as my second family, and I don’t think that will ever change.”
Nor will it change for most Fire Fans, many of whom have direct connections to the Fire Department.
One of Ken Little’s sons (and Phil Little’s brother) is a CFD captain. John Divita’s son is a Chicago firefighter. Alan Jacobs has no direct connection but counts most firefighters he has met as virtual brothers.
“I’ve never felt anything but privileged to be allowed into the firehouse,” he said. “And I’ve made some really good friends there, guys who would go to the wall for me.
“I don’t have many friends in psychotherapy like that.”
