69-Year-Old Fireman Not Burned Out by His Job

At an age when most people are collecting Social Security and watching their blood pressure, fireman Neil (Smiley) Wallace is still fighting fires, sometimes hauling a water-charged hose up steep Eagle Rock-area hills to battle brush and grass blazes.

The 69-year-old Wallace is the oldest active-duty firefighter in the Los Angeles Fire Department, according to city officials. He has been a fireman for more than 45 years.

And Wallace has been so durable during his career that he has never taken a sick day and has been off duty only seven times, all because of on-duty injuries, a fact noted last week when he was honored at Fire Station 42 in Eagle Rock by the Fire Commission, fellow firefighters and the community.

No Plans to Retire

The veteran fireman has no plans to retire.

“I just don’t feel like it’s time for me to get into a rocking chair,” Wallace said recently between medical emergency and fire calls. “I think there’s things to be seen, things to do. I haven’t got the feeling that I should retire and watch the grass grow.”

Wallace, a friendly man with powerful arms and hands, thinning brown hair and tanned face, credits good health and a rugged constitution inherited from his mother’s French side of the family for his longevity in a job where the average firefighter retires after 25 years.

Wallace and Ilda, his wife of 43 years, live within a mile of the Eagle Rock fire station in a foothill home they built themselves 30 years ago and where they reared their three children.

Convenient Location

Wallace has worked at “42” for 17 years, a convenient location not only for work, but also for visiting on his days off, when Ilda Wallace said he stops by while running errands.

“He loves his job,” she said. “He has never once said that he’s unhappy with work. Never. It’s great for a wife to know her husband is happy. . . . I’m not for retirement. . . . I haven’t seen too many happy retired people.”

Said Wallace:

“Oh, I think retirement will probably come to me. . . . Either my health breaks down and they sort of nudge me toward the door, or ask me to leave. I’m going to stay as long as I can . . . although I wouldn’t want to embarrass anyone, including myself. . . . If my health gives up, I’m gone.”

After his 70th birthday on Jan. 25, Wallace must undergo a physical and mental examination each year, instead of every two years as required of younger department members.

Wallace joined the Fire Department in 1942. He found the job suited him because he was strong and agile, hardly ever got sick and liked expending a great amount of energy and movement for a short time.

“It’s easy for me,” he said. “Mentally, I don’t worry about it. I don’t resist military command or the semi-military. I try to go along with it and try to make it work. . . . Here you have to live with your boss and you have to get along with your boss. And you have to remember he is the boss.”

Wallace got the nickname “Smiley” shortly after he became a firefighter. He was still carrying his equipment as he arrived to join Engine 3 Headquarters at 2nd and Hill streets.

A fireman called “Moe the Gimp” suggested that they call the new boot “Springtime” because it was March, but “Tomato Face,” the whisky-loving driver for an assistant chief, said no one could spell that. They decided to call him “Smiley” because he was always smiling.

Wallace stayed 26 years at Fire Station 3 until the Fire Department brought in new equipment and methods and, he said, he “got a little old for the area” and was moved out to the “grass league.”

Confident of Physical Strength

“They try to put their best men and youngest men in the most active and probably, indirectly, the most dangerous positions,” he said. “If you are young and alert and active, you generally work in the industrial heart of the city, then when you get older they allow you to gravitate.”

He is still confident that he has the physical strength to cope with his job.

“I can’t do it quite as fast, and maybe not quite as long. . . . But I can still do the job, particularly where we are up here. Brush and grass don’t require the immediate action that something in industrial would require.”

Spending more than 45 years as a firefighter, one of the most dangerous of jobs, has imbued Wallace with a bit of caution.

“It’s well to be regimented and trained to do things immediately at disregard to life and limb,” he said, “but sometimes you have to just sort of say, ‘Let’s see now. This doesn’t look quite right to me. It doesn’t feel right.’ You might get a back draft or you might fall through the floor or maybe there’s machinery up there and it might come down on top of you. It’s just a little teeny caution. It’s a hesitation that sometimes has paid off.”

Better safety equipment and practices have made the firefighter’s job safer over the years, according to Wallace. That, along with improved wages and health and pension benefits, are among the most important changes in his years on the department, he said.

Spirit of Camaraderie

To Wallace, one important aspect of being a firefighter has remained unchanged over the years--the spirit of camaraderie, symbolized for him by the table, where, in every fire station in the city, firefighters eat and talk together.

Touching the table at which he was sitting, he said:

“It’s like a family. You make a lot of friends. In fact, you’re closer to probably, I hate to say it, but you’re probably closer to a lot of your firemen friends and workers than you might be your own personal family because they get scattered.

“You can always bring a problem right to this table. I don’t care whether it’s financial or family troubles or sickness or whatever it might be. You always find an answer. . . . I’ve had retirees come back and I’d say, ‘What do you miss more than anything else?’ and they say, ‘That table right there.’ ”