March 30--Ken Sharp told his brother Jim two things when the younger Sharp called him years ago to ask about following in his footsteps to become a firefighter.
Volunteer first, and "cut your hair before you go."
He did both.
"It was long," Jim Sharp says of his hairstyle back then. "It was very long. It worked at the time."
Jim Sharp again followed in his brother's footsteps when the 27-year fire service veteran formally replaced his brother as the chief of West Pierce Fire & Rescue on March 16. The change came as Ken Sharp retired after 35 years with the department.
They share a last name, a sense of humor and the title "chief," which is what new recruits call the head of the department.
"We're not even sure they know our first names," Ken Sharp joked on one of his final days of work.
But to the old-timers at West Pierce, their new leader is still known as Ken's little brother, Jimmy.
In the chief's office, Ken Sharp left behind a mosaic U.S. flag made by his son's third-grade class, a memento he said he paid an arm and a leg for years ago.
In the department, he leaves a family legacy of West Pierce service.
Ken Sharp never thought about being a firefighter until his senior year of high school, when a friend was studying to join. He followed suit, to his mother's pleasure.
"She was just happy he was going to be employed," his brother teased.
A few years later, after studying computer science didn't work out, Jim Sharp called his brother, who is eight years older, to ask about joining the department. The younger Sharp started as a dispatcher in 1986 at Lakewood Fire, where his brother had started as a firefighter in 1977.
Ken Sharp became the Lakewood chief in 2007, and his brother became an assistant chief the next year.
When mergers made the department West Pierce in 2011, the two essentially kept those roles and continued working together.
The family tie never caused trouble in their working relationship, Ken Sharp said.
"We knew the score," said the outgoing chief. "It was never an issue for us. I was the big brother, so I got to tell him what to do anyway. That came naturally."
Other family members followed the brothers. Ken Sharp's daughter is a captain and spokeswoman for West Pierce, and one of his nephews is a Mount Vernon firefighter.
The older Sharps credit their father with the family's public service roots. Maurice Sharp enlisted in the Army, was a prisoner of war in Korea, and retired at Fort Lewis.
Now the extended family has four firefighters, various police officers and other public servants.
Around West Pierce, the family is known in part for its practical jokes.
"The fire service is built on that tradition," Ken said.
One of his favorites was when his brother helped him convince a superior that Ken Sharp had gotten out of hand in a training class. They sent mock letters from a professor who didn't exist and listed a fax line as his telephone number.
"We had him spun up in a lot of different directions on that one," said Jim.
Ken Sharp's daughter, now 30, followed his lead by pranking her dad once.
"They had me convinced that our captain at the time, who was much older, was going to be dating her," he said. "I was ready to go down and explain to him that that wasn't going to work out."
The good-natured ribbing won't end with Ken Sharp's retirement. Firefighters exaggeratedly stood at attention as a joke when the outgoing chief walked into the day room at West Pierce headquarters, days before his departure.
Jim Sharp said he was among the first to know of Ken's retirement plans.
"I knew, probably more so than others, that he was getting close," he said.
About a month after the announcement, the younger Sharp decided to go for the job. There were two other internal candidates. The three went out to dinner March 5, when the West Pierce Board of Fire Commissioners was expected to make a decision, and awaited the call announcing the new chief.
"Ken has done a very good job of mentoring," fire commission chairman Bart Dalton said. "We had three very, very qualified candidates that applied for the position. After listening to all three candidates, the board came to the decision that Jim was the right man for the job."
No West Pierce firefighters took The News Tribune up on an offer to talk about their new boss or the outgoing chief.
But seeing the three candidates interact after the announcement, no one would know they were up against each other for the job, Ken Sharp said.
"It's just a tight-knit staff," he said. "That's the best part of the fire service. You end up becoming very close friends, working as a team."
The transition will be pretty straightforward because of that, he said.
"It's not so much that we're brothers, we've just worked so effectively on the same staff for the past five years," he said.
One matter did require special attention.
Ken Sharp's 8-year-old daughter, Chloe, told her dad she was worried about not seeing her firefighter friends anymore.
"She's a social butterfly, knows where everyone's candy dish is," he said. "I promised I'd give her the door code and drop her off every now and then."
Just in case, she took matters into her own hands and spoke with her uncle.
"Chloe called me the other night and asked if she could have her birthday at the fire station," Jim Sharp said. "I told her I thought we might be able to work that out."
Spending time with Chloe and his 11-year-old son, Sam, is something Ken Sharp looks forward to in retirement.
He'll be around to support the new chief, though: "If something pops up," he said, "I'm a phone call away."
The work is just starting for his brother.
"Now I have to fix all the stuff that he messed up," he quipped.
"That's full-time work," Ken Sharp joked back.
The Sharps don't find their story unique among firefighters; It's common for family members to work for the same department, and bonds between coworkers are really closer to those of relatives, they said.
"It's really a big family anyway," Ken said. The goal: "To leave it just a little better than you found it."
Alexis Krell: 253-597-8268
blog.thenewstribune.com/crime
Copyright 2013 - The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.)
