Where are you from? New Jersey.

Why did you move to Jackson? I was a skier and there was a little ski hill in New Jersey, Arrowhead, that I started skiing when I was 5, and when I was 14 I was a Salomon certified binding tech, a ski instructor at 16, certified further at 19, and I was just destined to drop out of college and become a carpenter. When I was 25, I made the decision to come out to a real ski hill having never been here and I just picked a place that was growing. It was somewhere I could be a carpenter and a place that had a lot of snow. So, I moved here in 1989.

What do you do for work now? Well I was a carpenter up until 2009, but in 2008 I started doing something different which was starting my own lawn business. So in 2010, I put the carpentry tools away and now I have a lawn business.

What do you do in your free time? I mostly do whatever I can to afford to live here. We have four kids, three of them are out of the house, so free time is getting chores done and going for hikes with the dogs. This is gonna sound really lame, but in the wintertime I sneak in a free run whenever I can. 

How long have you been a part of JH Fire/EMS? Since 2020. 

What made you want to join? It’s always been there, and I applied back in ‘91/’92 and I never heard anything. We were living in town at the time, so I applied to Station 1. Once we started having kids, it was still in the back of my mind, but it wasn’t something that I felt like I had any time to do. But then, when the youngest was a freshman, it was something I still really wanted to do. At my age and stage in life, a lot of my peers are on boards for different charities, and I certainly considered that, but I pretty much hated the idea. I’m a hands-on guy and my way of giving back was working hard. The fire department requires us to work hard and I like it.  

What is your role in the department? I am a volunteer out of Station 6. You know, that’s an interesting question, because as you know at Station 6 with the paid duty crew, it’s more or less whatever they tell me to do, whatever they need; I’m open to getting it done and finding out how to do it better next time. I don’t mind being a grunt: I just love being a part of the team. 

What are your future goals in the department? Firefighter 2 and ADO. To be honest, ADO is really what I would want to do, but I know FF2 is a prerequisite. 

What is your favorite part of volunteering? The whole crew. The members, all of them, and especially the ones in Wilson: the Station 6 and Station 2 guys are just awesome crews to be with. 

What about the most challenging part? *chuckles* Sometimes putting on the bunker gear and going on air and going into the live fire or entrapment situations is the hardest part honestly: it’s always a good mental and physical challenge. That’s almost easier to work through than the things I don’t know about though, like the medical side of things. As an EMR and with limited experience with patient care, the hardest part is all that I don’t know. 

What advice would you give new recruits? Welcome aboard to the greatest journey you’ll ever take in your life!

Is there anything you wish you had known when starting? Not really. I’ve often thought and said, wow I had no idea. I knew it would be a lot of work, but I could never imagine how much work it would truly be. Just that two year process of Firefighter 1, EMR, Hazmat, Wildland, everything…I had to go off of not knowing what half of those things were. It was just better for me to not even know.

What is the most valuable trait for someone to have in this line of work? Working well with others. 

Who do you look up to in the department? He just retired, but Eric Borgeson. I also would say, if I could put two other guys in there: Tyler Hartz and Chris Stiehl.  

Do you think it has been challenging for your family for you to be a part of the department? I don’t. Especially for my kids, they love it. My wife, her background is nursing, loves to hear about the calls I’ve been out on. When I talk to them on the phone, they love hearing about it. They gotta pull my teeth a little bit about the things I’ve been doing, but it’s fun to share with them the cool things we get to do, fighting fires and helping people in car wrecks and such.