Bleskachek, 41, has been interim chief of the Minneapolis Fire Department for the past five months and this week was named by Mayor R.T. Rybak as his choice to officially oversee the department of 422 firefighters and a $43 million budget.
If confirmed by the City Council in December and that appears virtually certain Bleskachek will become the first female fire chief in Minnesota history and one of the few openly gay fire chiefs in the country.
"She's broken barriers and that's significant," Rybak said. "But what's especially significant is that none of it is considered that big of a deal in the fire department. There she's known more as a leader and as someone who has worked side by side in the line of duty."
If you're looking for gender pioneers in the Minneapolis Fire Department, Bleskachek says a leading candidate would be Capt. Jean Kidd, who was among the department's first female recruits in 1986 and the first woman to become a captain.
"She blazed the trail for the rest of us," said Bleskachek, who joined the fire department in 1989 and later worked for Kidd on the nation's first all-female fire crew.
"It sort of came into being by default," Bleskachek said of the four-member female fire crew that worked out of Fire Station No. 5 in South Minneapolis. "There was an opening for one firefighter and a captain, and Jean and I got those jobs. The two guys already on the crew said, 'Not on my watch' and left, and those jobs were then filled by women.
"That kind of attitude doesn't happen anymore," Bleskachek added, though she acknowledges that the city still has two all-female crews.
Today, the department's 422 firefighters include 128 minorities and 71 women, making it the most diverse in the country.
While Bleskachek has been part of it, she says she's not responsible for it. That credit, she says, goes to her predecessor, Rocco Forte, who was a young firefighter back in 1979 when the federal courts ordered the department to diversify.
Placed on a community committee to orchestrate the change, Forte was training captain when Kidd came in with the first wave of women trainees in 1986.
Forte said the department's half-year training period proved to be one key to melding diverse groups of recruits into comrades something like the effect of boot camp on soldiers.
"They bond together over five or six months, so it all becomes seamless when they go on duty," Forte said.
Bleskachek grew up as an athletic rugby player and rock climber in Chippewa Falls, Wis., and was studying religion and anthropology at the University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire when student loan programs were cut back in the 1980s. She dropped out.
She recalls taking a career aptitude test while looking for a job and being surprised when she was told that she was most suited for being a firefighter. "That was in 1984, and two years later, I decided to go for it," she said.
Forte said Bleskachek expressed interest years ago in pursing leadership training, with the goal of becoming a top fire department official or even chief.
"She was very clear about it, and she was one of three or four people who were on track for succession," Forte said.
Throughout its history, chiefs of the Minneapolis Fire Department have risen from the ranks.
Rybak said he never considered an outside search to replace Forte when the chief retired after 30 years last spring and became an assistant city coordinator.
Forte said Bleskachek is familiar with the biggest challenges facing the department, including an ever-tightening budget.
"It's not looking too bright for 2006 and beyond," Bleskachek said, estimating that 12 firefighting positions will probably have to be cut in two years, hopefully through an "exit incentive" program already in place.
"Bonnie will be an excellent chief," Forte said. "She has a quality that wasn't one of my strengths she listens well to all sides of the issues. I was pretty paramilitary.
"But when she makes a decision, she's decisive about it," Forte added.
Bleskachek, who lives in South Minneapolis with her two children, ages 10 and 5, says she realizes that she's a role model for women. Indeed, she said she's been reminded of that repeatedly in the interviews she's given since Rybak announced her recommendation last Sunday.
"I'm always asked if it's difficult being a woman doing this job," Bleskachek said. "When that question is no longer asked, I'll know we've made progress."
