FDNY Firefighting Dad, Sons Battle Blazes, Promote Diversity

For FDNY firefighter Robert Thomas and his three sons, fighting fires and saving lives has become a family affair.

All four are city firefighters stationed throughout Brooklyn, joining a growing number of the department’s black “legacy” families, where children follow their mothers and fathers into the FDNY.

“It’s an incredible feeling knowing that they’re following in my footsteps,” Robert Thomas, 61, told the Daily News Wednesday. “Being in the FDNY is truly a family experience anyway. Over the years it meant more to me than I originally thought it would and I know it would be the same for them too.”

Thomas took the test for the FDNY in 1982. When he got accepted, he first turned it down, deciding instead to take a job with an insurance company, the Brownsville native remembered.

But members of the Vulcan Society, a fraternal group of black firefighters, encouraged him to join the academy — and he’s never looked back, said the 38-year FDNY veteran, currently assigned to Engine 205 in Brooklyn Heights.

“It’s been an incredible career. I had no idea what I was turning down the first time, but I know I wouldn’t do it again!" he joked.

But being a black New York City firefighter in the 1980s, when the FDNY was almost exclusively white, wasn’t easy, he recalled.

“It was tough coming in from Brownsville to the fire department, it was a completely different culture,” he remembered. “It was a challenge going in, but I think I changed a lot of hearts and minds by doing the job, and they helped me become a better firefighter. A level of respect grew between us.”

The number of blacks in the FDNY never rose above 650 in a force of about 11,000 until about 2002, when the Vulcan Society filed a landmark lawsuit charging that blacks and Latinos were subjected to disparate treatment in the almost all-male and predominantly white department.

The case was finally settled in 2014, sparking landmark revisions in the department’s recruitment and testing procedures. The changes have had some positive results: last year, 20,516 of the 72,611 young men and women applying for the FDNY, about 28% were black, according to city statistics.

African-Americans are also breaking through to the higher ranks. In September, 22-year FDNY veteran Malcom Moore was promoted to Deputy Chief, the first black firefighter to be elevated to that position in 30 years.

The FDNY has changed quite a bit in the 18 years since the lawsuit was filed, said Thomas, who was over the moon when his sons Jason and Nathan both joined the department in 2014 and trained in the academy together. His third son Stephen, a Navy veteran, became an FDNY firefighter in September.

They now join a growing tradition which started in the 1960s with the Hargetts and the Tylers, the FDNY’s first black multi-generational legacy families where grandfather, father and son all wore department patches.

Their story has also become a part of the FDNY’s social media campaign to encourage city minorities to join the department.

The elder Thomas said he never encouraged his sons to join the FDNY, but over the years he told them what a great job it was. He’d also casually remind them that the FDNY was the reason they had a roof over their heads and their mother didn’t need to work.

“I guess they took that into consideration,” he joked.

Thomas also took his kids to his firehouse so they could see firsthand the camaraderie he shared with his fellow firefighters.

“As they got older, I think it became more meaningful to them,” he said.

Jason Thomas, the oldest of the three sons at 29, said growing up in a firefighter household made joining the FDNY a no-brainer.

“My dad showed us all the things he was able to do while working for the FDNY,” Jason said. “For me it was the flexibility and the quality of life that it brings.”

A need to help people must also run in his family’s DNA, said Jason, who is currently assigned to Engine 216 in Williamsburg.

“Being a firefighter you get to see people at their most vulnerable, and we get the opportunity to help them,” Jason said. “We give our all into trying to help out with a difficult situation.”

Robert Thomas agrees. He knew that by joining the department, his kids — Nathan, 27, is currently serving in Engine Company 219 near the Barclay’s Center in Fort Greene and Stephen, 25, is assigned to Engine Company 225 in East New York — would become better people by serving in the fire department.

“The FDNY is going to bring out the best in them,” he said. “It’ll make them more courageous and will develop their character, making them more selfless and humble by what they see and experience in the field.”

“There’s a whole lot of character building in fighting fires,” he said. “You better yourself while helping people in need and that’s huge.”

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