Deputy Columbia Fire Chief Aubrey Jenkins has a nice job, a nice department-issued Ford Crown Victoria and a nice perspective of history.
Jenkins spent his Saturday afternoon ferrying retired Capt. Abram Coles and retired firefighter J.D. Williams to Coles' surprise 80th birthday party.
Williams, Coles and Louis Williams, a retired deputy fire chief, were members of the first class of black paid firefighters in Columbia's history. Of the eight, only Coles, J.D. Williams and Louis Williams are still living. Saturday's party served as an impromptu reunion.
It was Jenkins' job to keep Coles and his buddies occupied until the party started, which he did by driving them around town.
"They paved the way," Jenkins, who is black, said while driving down Fairfield Road. "If they would have quit, there would have been no hope for people like me."
J.D. Williams, a tall man with short, gray hair and glasses, nodded his head in the back seat.
"They did everything they could to run us away. They thought we would come in there and fight and drink liquor," he said. "But we fooled them."
Coles shows his age now, his hands shaking from Parkinson's disease and his body weak from prostate cancer. But his mind is sharp, and memories pour out of him as soon as he sits down.
After 12 years on the job, Coles had to fight to get promoted to captain and to give black firefighters proper equipment. He moved to the Shandon station and wore the white shirt of an officer. One of his white firefighters wore the blue shirt of an engineer, but that didn't stop people from going to the white officer first for information.
"I told him to be seen and not heard," Coles said.
Coles and J.D. Williams weren't looking to make history in May 1953; they were just looking for a job. Along the way, they inspired other blacks to follow them.
Capt. Herbert Barnett, who is black, served under Coles from 1985 until Coles retired in 1987. When Barnett was a rookie, Coles sent him in the back of a burning house while Coles went around the front to check on other firefighters. Barnett backed away from fear. Coles came back around, took him inside and showed him how to put the fire out.
"What I learned under him, I am still using today to help firefighters who work under me," he said.
About 17 people were waiting in the dark at the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Alumnae house on Fairfield Road when Coles walked in the door. About 20 minutes later, the party had swelled to about 50 people, including a group of about eight on-duty firefighters.
Margaret Carroll, a Columbia firefighter for five years, had never seen Coles except for a photo in the museum at the fire department headquarters on Laurel Street. "The fire department has come a long way," she said.
Louis Williams, who served as deputy fire chief before Jenkins, couldn't make the party, but did visit with Coles and Williams. He leaned on the car and shook their hands while standing in his front yard.
"You're doing a good job," he told Jenkins. "Because you know, I've been there."
