My journey from Research Engineer to Firefighter
First a caveat: My move to a new career was not motivated by the Great Recession. I wasn’t lucky - or alternatively, skilled - enough to last until our economy turned south. By that time I had largely completed my transition.
I always knew as a child I would be an engineer. My father, deceased when I was five, had been an engineer. Both of my grandfathers, one deceased before my birth, were engineers. My third grandfather - my grandmother’s second husband, who meticulously built me wooden toys, model aircraft and a toy-chest “caboose” when I was a child - was a draftsman and former aeronautical mechanic during the Second World War. As a write this, I am less than a yard from the gold LeCoultre atmospheric clock my remaining grandfather was presented for 25 years of faithful service as a safety engineer for Texaco. Such was the certainty of my future that my mother felt it necessary in my final year of high school to point out that there were other options.
By May 1999 I had graduated from a challenging degree in Engineering Physics from Queen’s University, a school as Ivy League as offered in Canada. I had spent 16 months in an internship with then stock-market darling JDS Uniphase, and in the process managed to bag my first patent in the process.
I sported my father’s iron ring, an item my mother had shown me as a child, but never allowed me to wear. The ring as given to me was too large, and so I “paid” the shop mechanic of the University Physics Department a bottle of whiskey to help me fit the ring with a stainless insert. Following a summer of development work building rainwater catchment systems in South America, I returned to JDS Uniphase to take a position in their Strategic Research Group. I showed early promise and was awarded a second patent. My employer had benefited more than most from the Internet bubble. On paper, my colleagues and I were rich from lucrative stock-options. With fewer than a thousand employees when I had first joined in 1997, its ranks swelled to over 14 thousand by 2001 before the bubble inevitably burst.
I rode the roller-coaster until the company had shrivelled to between two and three thousand employees. My time was up, but I had another job lined up. Just under a year later, late in the summer of 2003, I was laid off again, this time with few prospects.
When you first meet someone the first question they ask - assuming of course that you’ve identified yourself - is “What do you do?”. Such is the importance of a career in North American society. What could I say? The question wasn’t just“What do you do?”. For me it was “Who are you anyways?”. I had no answer. I was ashamed of being unemployed, of not having direction to my life for the first time. In retrospect, I realize I had slipped into a depression.
For close to three years I did a variety of things: I spent a winter as a ski instructor before falling into residential contracting. By 2005, having bought a house and with a 3 month old son at home I finally found work as an engineer again. But I’d lost the taste for it. On the advice of one of my wife’s colleagues I’d applied to the Fire Department. When deciding whether or not to commence a long, costly, and time consuming application process, I spoke to a firefighter, the brother of my wife’s colleague. He was the first person I’d heard say that they “loved” their job. No caveats, no hedging.
But the Fire Department was in a hiring freeze and so I forgot about my application. I was working as an engineer but as a “contractor”, a technical mercenary. By the summer of 2008, now with a second 3 month old son at home, I was sent to Mexico to help with production difficulties in an outsourced manufacturing facility. I was being paid to make sure Canadian positions could be cut and replaced by cheaper Mexican labour. It was too much, I now embodied the very thing I despised. With the local tech economy improving, I finally found full-time work at another company, with a very attractive commute: 476 steps from my house to my desk. Still, I was faking it. My second day of work at my new position I walked many of those 476 steps with my eyes closed, day-dreaming about firefighting, the prospect having been recently revived. By 10am my wife phoned me at work: I was in, I’d start in the fall.
Firefighting, as with many professions, is depicted glamorously on TV and in movies. The reality is seldom as exciting. But there is no denying that my profession gives me the opportunity to help people, and the tools to accomplish that task with aplomb. I’ve never run into a burning building - in slo-mo, with 8 camera angles - to rescue a child at risk of life and limb. But I’ve held someone's hand while they’re suffering. I’ve helped people deal with one of the worst days of their lives. I’ve treated people with respect and dignity when they’ve needed it the most. It might not be TV worthy, it might not be heroic, but it matters to them. It sure as hell matters to me.
I have regrets about the career I left behind, and I’ll always wonder how much my failure was personal and how much was a product of interesting times. I miss the intellectual challenge, but I’ve embraced new challenges. Now, more than 30 pounds lighter, I have completed my first ½ Ironman, falling back on my experience as a varsity swimmer. My new career affords me many advantages. First and foremost is the pride and satisfaction of helping people. But a close second is the new balance I’ve found to life. A corporate environment can have a “winner-take-all” feel to it where your employer insists on being your top priority. But a Fire Department is different: Family Comes First. Whether its volunteering at my son’s school, generally spending more time with my boys, or training for my next triathlon, I’ve found a balance to life that eluded me before.
I’ve been blessed by many things: A family that has been almost uniformly supportive. A mother who, despite being a nationally recognized researcher and professor, reminded me that she too only found her calling in her thirties. A wife who supported me through unemployment and who unblinkingly backed a move that saw my wages cut by 40% in the first year. Healthy, happy children, who make me laugh daily. Finally, a sense of who I am, who I want to be.
Now when people ask me who I am, I have a quick response: “I’m a firefighter, and I love my job.”
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Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
Salon.com
Comments
I am Wildland Firefighter certified and just completed Firefighter I Academy last spring. Currently, I am just on my little local volunteer department, but I am looking into the options of switching careers into the fire service.
Thank you for your article.