Whipped Cream Difficulties

Dennis Smith.

I think a lot of people (outside of firefighting) have forgotten that name, but Report from Engine Co. 82 was a huge deal back in the day.

The book sold some three million copies, ennobled Mr. Smith as a champion of his profession and inspired countless men and women to become firefighters.
“The author’s pride clearly derives not from his writing, but from his job as a firefighter — the most hazardous job of all, according to the National Safety Council,” Anatole Broyard wrote in his Times book review. “The risk one takes in, writing a book — and there are those who will tell you that this is the most hazardous occupation — must seem comparatively small to him. One hopes he will go on taking it.”

I read it at an inappropriately young age. I won’t say how old I was, but “Emergency” was on first-run network television at the time. The thing that sticks with me all these years later is how much abuse Smith and his colleagues took from the people they were trying to help.

Mr. Smith was a Renaissance firefighter.
He played eight musical instruments; founded Firehouse magazine in 1976 (and sold it in 1991 and made $7 million); was the founding chairman of the New York City Fire Museum and was instrumental in converting the Engine Company 30 firehouse in SoHo as its site; was president and chairman of the Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club, which moved from Manhattan to the South Bronx; and was a chairman of the New York Academy of Art.
He was the first chairman of the International Association of Fire Chiefs’ Near Miss task force, focused on preventing firefighter injuries and deaths, and won awards from the Congressional Fire Services Institute and the National Fire Academy, and the New York Fire Department.

Any man who tries to prevent deaths and injuries in his chosen occupation, no matter what that is, deserves mad props in my opinion.

In a Times opinion essay in 1971, Mr. Smith recalled his ebullience at the prospect of becoming a firefighter: “I would play to the cheers of excited hordes — climbing ladders, pulling hose, and saving children from the waltz of the hot masked devil. I paused and fed the fires of my ego — tearful mothers would kiss me, editorial writers would extol me in lofty phrases, and mayors would pin ribbons to my breast.”
After eight years, he wrote, the romantic visions had faded.
“I have climbed a thousand ladders, and crawled Indian fashion down as many halls into a deadly nightshade of smoke, a whirling darkness of black poison, knowing all the while that the ceiling may fall, or the floor collapse, or a hidden explosive ignite,” Mr. Smith added. “I have watched friends die, and I have carried death in my hands. With good reason have Christians chosen fire as the metaphor of hell.”
“There is no excitement, no romance, in being this close to death,” he wrote, later adding: “Yet, I know that I could not do anything else with such a great sense of accomplishment.”

I’ve gone back and forth for a few days about whether I should include the obit for Ann Arensberg. There was finally one thing that tipped me over the edge.

“Sister Wolf” was roundly praised by critics and won the 1981 National Book Award for best first novel, beating out Jean M. Auel’s mega-best seller, “The Clan of the Cave Bear.” (Between 1979 and 1987, the awards were known as the American Book Awards, not to be confused with another, unrelated literary prize with the same name; they also included many more categories than they do today, including best first novel.)

That wasn’t the tipping point. This was:

Ms. Arensberg’s next book, the satirical “Group Sex” (1986), grew out of a short story she had written in 1980 and drew on material closer at hand, including her own life. It told the story of a meek, eager-to-please book editor named Frances Girard who falls in love with her temperamental opposite: a brash, rebellious theater director named Paul Treat, best known, Ms. Arensberg wrote, for putting on a production of “As You Like It” but with seals.

I’m sorry to laugh at someone’s obit, but “As You Like It” with seals kicks over my giggle box. Indeed, it has me thinking about a whole line of Shakespeare productions with animals. An all-racoon production of “Macbeth”?

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 23rd, 2022 at 3:32 pm and is filed under Books, Heroism, Obits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.