The “Jersey Guys” are excited to be the newest addition to Firehouse.com’s blog community. Here is a quick explanation on how The Jersey Guys partnership developed.
It's a partnership between Lt. John Lewis, (ret) of the Passaic, N.J., Fire Department and Robert Moran, current fire chief of the Brewster, Mass., Fire Department and retired fire chief in the City of Englewood, N.J. We both started our fire service venture over 30 years ago as two young and impressionable 16-year-old “junior auxiliary” firefighters in our respective local volunteer fire departments in Maywood, N.J. and and Leonia, N.J.
As time passed we both were hired as career firefighters found ourselves responding to fires in the same mutual aid group, attending the same training classes, being mentored by the same great firefighters and fire officers, and eventually working together at the Bergen County Fire Academy. While working together at the academy we had the opportunity to discuss our career goals and what we saw as our future in the fire service. Over a short period of time and many academy classes people began to mention that they actually enjoyed the sessions John and I taught because of the interaction and synergy we brought to the classroom and training ground.
Based on the support of these brother firefighters and their comments we made the decision to partner up and hit the national training circuit to share our knowledge and experience with our brother firefighters, hone our instructor skills, and acquire further knowledge of the “job” from our peers
Since making that decision we have spent well over 25 years of teaching together as a team sharing a wide variety of our own personal perspectives and experiences ranging from the probationary firefighter (we remember those days!) to chief officer level positions. We are humble, blue-collar guys more into fireground operations than shuffling papers in the administrative world and we feel this will be extremely beneficial to the information and discussions we will bring to the table. We are honored to have been asked to join the current group of elite Firehouse.com bloggers and will work hard to maintain the quality information and discussions they deliver to our readers.
Over our careers we have had the distinct pleasure of teaching at all of the major fire service conferences, various state sponsored conferences, and for a diverse group of regional and local training facilities. We are fortunate to have benefited from personal relationships, conversations, differing opinions, and shared meals with leading fire service icons past and present including some of the best firefighters and fire officers in our business today. It is these very experiences along with over 35 years each of responding to incidents in volunteer and career environments that have shaped our lives, our professional competence, our ability to capably develop and deliver quality fire service training, and most importantly give legitimacy to the sometimes controversial, always useful messages that we will deliver with each posting. It is our expectation that everyone who reads or contributes to the blog will come away with a tip, nugget, or idea that will make them better, smarter, and more competent in their position, including us.
Many of you who will follow our blog have interacted with us personally, attended one of our training programs, read one of our articles, or operated with us on the fireground. We look forward to maintaining these old friendships and ask only one favor of the group. If you like what you read pass on the site to our brother and firefighters and fire officers so that the “Jersey Guys” have the opportunity to share some of the knowledge that was passed on to us by our mentors from the “greatest generation."
