Chief Can Soon Just Ignore the Alarm--Clock, That Is : Retirements: Bobby Horne is ending 38 years of Ventura firefighting. He was late to his own farewell dinner because he went out on a fire call.

The electronic firefighter, just one of many toys on Ventura Fire Chief Bobby Horne’s desk, climbed to the top of the ladder, then down, then back to the top, as Horne pressed the controls.

“This is the only fireman that always does whatever I tell him to and never gives me any back talk,” Horne said with a chuckle.

Horne, 61, has been doling out orders to the city’s fire teams for much of his life. He’s been with the Ventura department for 38 years, first as a firefighter, then as a captain, then as assistant fire chief and finally as chief for the past 13 years. Dec. 28 will be his last day at work.

“People ask me if I’m retiring because I’m sick of the job after all these years. . . . I love it, but it’s just time to go,” said Horne, who still chooses to respond to many fire alarms, even though his job is administrative. Earlier this month, Horne was late to his own retirement dinner because he was responding a two-alarm fire.

His awards are already packed away. The many toy fire engines, fire hydrants and other memorabilia on his desk, mostly given to him by his secretary, Nancy Oechsle, will be taken home soon along with the picture of Tahiti that hangs behind his chair.

Horne and his wife, Lee, count Tahiti among their favorite vacation spots and hope to head back. The couple has also planned a trip to Germany in March.

Horne said he’ll continue his hobbies of gardening and ballroom dancing and maybe take up golf. “One of my most important goals is to learn how to relax,” he said.

Family and friends know the slim, gray-haired, bespectacled man as “a real calm, mellow person,” Ventura Police Chief Richard Thomas said. But after almost four decades of life-and-death situations, tension and grief are not foreign to him.

One episode that has haunted Horne for more than 15 years was the death of a small child he tried to rescue from drowning.

“That stuck with me,” Horne said. “I’ve seen a lot of people die. . . . But that little boy, I held him, I tried to help. But he died.

“It was a traumatic event and I’ve suppressed it for so long. I think every fireman that’s been around for a while has something stuck back there. You can psychologically deal with a lot. But once in a while, something hits you.”

Working for the Ventura Fire Department since the days of President Harry S. Truman, Horne has seen a lot of changes. Firefighters no longer rush into smoke-filled buildings without protective masks. In 1981, the Ventura department was the first in the county to hire a woman, he said. New technology in communications, Horne’s pet project, has been introduced to the profession.

But one thing that hasn’t changed is the color of the department’s trucks.

“It’s a matter of tradition. Firetrucks are red,” Horne said.

Some fire departments, including Oxnard’s and the county’s, use greenish-yellow trucks, which tests have shown are more visible at night than their red counterparts.

“If someone hits a truck that’s as big as the side of a building and has 40,000 lights flashing and blaring all over it, it’s not because that truck is red and not yellow,” Horne said. “And if God had wanted firetrucks to be another color, he would have painted them that way.”