On an evening in August 1981, Harvey Eisner—a well-known Bronx photographer and fire buff—came into my office at Division 7 in the Bronx, introduced himself and said that Dennis Smith wanted me to write a bi-monthly column in Firehouse Magazine. He said I would be paid several hundred dollars and get my photo next to each article. Sounded pretty good to me considering that I had been submitting technical articles to professional journals and getting neither of those things.
I did not know Dennis Smith, but I read his book “Report from Engine 82.” It was his best and most popular one—a New York Times bestseller. I had also seen him talk about his book on Johnny Carson. I read that he had sold the rights of the book to Hollywood and reinvested the money he made along with some other businessmen to start Firehouse Magazine.
After writing for the magazine, I got to know Dennis fairly well. He was different. A firefighter first and foremost, he worked in the busiest firehouse in the city during the “war years.” He socialized with writers, artists, actors and people in the media, and most of all, he was a savvy businessman.
After writing his bestselling book and becoming known across America, he wanted to start a magazine. After getting some businessmen to back him and doing a lot of research, he wrote to fire chiefs across America and asked them for their firefighters’ addresses and told them he wanted to start a publication called Firehouse Magazine. It would be a magazine about firefighters, officers and chiefs and what they did to save lives and property of people in their communities. The chiefs sent thousands of addresses. Dennis mailed them free copies of the new magazine with subscription information to fill out if they wanted to read more. They did and sent back more addresses. And so starting 40 years ago, Firehouse Magazine became the largest fire magazine in the nation, with 80,000 copies printed each month and an estimate of eight firefighters sharing each copy in the firehouse.
Dennis the businessman was not finished with the books and the magazine. He started Firehouse Expo in 1984, calling for America’s firefighters to come to Baltimore. This also became another success. After that, Firehouse Magazine was one of the first companies to produce and market video fire training. Video training was so new they had to ship the VCR machines with the video training package. This was high tech, and most firehouses did not have video recording machines.
After all this success, The Wall Street Journal business section ran an article stating that Dennis Smith, Firehouse Magazine founder, New York City firefighter, author, publisher and businessman, was on a mission—a mission to entertain, educate and equip the firefighters of America. And today, this mission of the New York City firefighter is still ongoing.
Firehouse Expo will be in Nashville this October, and if you want to be entertained, educated and equipped with a new apparatus or some tools, come to Nashville and celebrate our 40th anniversary.
Vincent Dunn
VINCENT DUNN, a Firehouse® contributing editor, is a 42-year veteran of the FDNY and a deputy chief (ret.), serving as a division commander for midtown Manhattan. He is the author of the best-selling text and DVDs “Collapse of Burning Buildings” and textbooks “Safety and Survival on the Fireground,” “Command and Control of Fires and Emergencies” and “Strategy of Firefighting – How to Extinguish Fires.” His most recent book is titled “Building Construction: The Firefighter’s Battlespace,” and book proceeds will help support the FDNY and FDNY Foundation. Dunn has a master’s degree in urban studies, a bachelor’s degree in sociology and an associate’s degree in fire administration from Queens College, City University of New York.
