Putting Out Fires : Bias: Paul Orduna rose above bigotry of the early days to become assistant chief .

When Paul A. Orduna joined the Los Angeles City Fire Department, isolation was as much a part of his job as fighting fires.

“Every day I would go to work, and nobody would talk to me--except the captain to give me orders. If I walked in a room, (other firefighters) would walk out.

“Right from the first day they took me in the office and told me, ‘Bring your own pots and pans. You have to cook your own food and eat after every one else has eaten.’ ”

The year was 1957. Two years earlier, under pressure from the NAACP and African-American firefighters, the city had ordered the department to put an end to its longstanding policy of racially segregated stations.

When the legal battle ended, the real battle began.

At the stations, where firefighters live 24 hours a day, African-Americans bore the brunt of the hostility felt by whites who were violently opposed to integration.

There were ethnic slurs, daily taunts and acts of cruelty:

Senior members of the department still remember a day in 1955--the first year of integration--when an African-American firefighter returned from battling a blaze with others in his company. Exhausted, the man plopped down on his bed only to find that white firefighters had smeared his pillow with excrement.

Firefighters at Engine Co. 46 at Normandie and Vernon posted a sign the same year that said: “White Adults.”

But Paul Orduna ignored the harassment, the pranks, the taunts. And ultimately he became assistant chief, the highest rank achieved by an African-American in the history of the city Fire Department.

Shortly after Orduna’s retirement this year, Fire Chief Donald O. Manning praised his work with the department, calling it “incredible.”

Orduna was known for his accessibility and his willingness to assist younger firefighters attempting to rise in the ranks. He created programs designed to increase cultural awareness among firefighters and advised a string of chiefs on how to improve the department’s racial balance.

As assistant chief, he headed a new division that oversaw training and recruitment.

“His legacy will long be remembered in the department,” Manning said.

Even Orduna seemed a bit awed by his success.

“When I first came on the department the only thing on my mind was trying to survive,” he said, as he sat in his home surrounded by citations, awards and gifts presented to him at a retirement dinner.

“I never thought I’d have a chance to promote through the ranks like this.”

In fact, for a brief time it seemed as if Orduna would never get a job with the department.

In 1956, on his first attempt to join it, he was rejected. A captain renowned for his racism ruined Orduna’s chances by flunking him on the oral exam.

“I was devastated,” Orduna recalled.

Orduna returned to his hometown of Omaha, Neb., where he was already a firefighter; he stayed in contact with Arnett Hartsfield, a Los Angeles firefighter who became an attorney and led efforts to integrate the Fire Department, and other members of the Stentorians, a group formed to increase the hiring and promotion of African-Americans in the fire service.

In 1957 Orduna applied to the Los Angeles department again, was interviewed by a different captain and was accepted.

During the early days of his career he worked in silence, ate alone and slept in a bed that was separated from the rest of the men. The city had mandated integration, but it could not mandate human decency or compassion.

Over the years, Orduna witnessed change--in small increments. “The more stations I worked at, the better it became,” he said. “Especially (in 1960) when Chief Miller put out an order that there would be no more separate mess halls . . . (that) everybody had to eat together. That really broke down a lot of the barriers.”

So did the Watts riot of 1965. “Black firefighters became premiums during the riots,” Orduna said. “They wanted me to sit up front to make sure everybody knew they had a black firefighter in the station so they wouldn’t get attacked,” he said with a laugh.

For three days in August, Watts burned. It was a tense time, even for the firefighters called in to salvage the community. After the smoke cleared, Angelenos slowly began to acknowledge that city services needed to reflect the diversity of the city.

Orduna became a bridge between the black community and the department. He and other African-American firefighters recruited at schools and job fairs. They attended community meetings, letting others know that the department was a viable career option for minorities.

In 1974 Orduna was promoted to captain. But that same year, a department survey showed that of the 3,000 members of the department, only 45 were African-Americans.

“We had our work cut out for us,” he recalled.

As a captain he advised department heads on how to implement a newly instituted affirmative action program and encouraged black firefighters to become involved in recruitment.

Orduna’s rise in the department did not go unnoticed in the community.

In 1980 he was promoted to battalion chief, only the second African-American to achieve that rank in the department’s history. He commanded Battalion 13 in South Los Angeles on Manchester and Hoover and Battalion 14 in the East San Fernando Valley.

“People would see me running the company, and it made them feel good,” he said.

When Orduna was promoted to assistant chief in February, 1986, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest African-American congregation in Los Angeles, held a huge celebration.

Younger firefighters saw in him an inspiration, too. “He showed that it could be done,” said Kwame Cooper, current president of the Stentorians.

“He has easily helped every African-American on the department in some way shape or form.”

He is, Cooper said, a “quiet warrior.”

And he is a man seemingly at peace.

“I remember all the racial indignities I had to deal with, but I don’t dwell on it,” Orduna said.

Several years ago, the captain who first prevented Orduna from joining the department, visited him at work. The man had “found religion,” Orduna said, and wanted to make amends with all the people he had wronged. He asked Orduna to pray with him. Orduna refused.

“I told him, ‘I put that out of my mind a long time ago,’ ” Orduna said. “We can’t let things like that stop us.”

Throughout his 33 years with the department Orduna, now 63, never forgot those who paved the way for his success.

“I knew that a lot of black firefighters that came before me had sacrificed their careers fighting for integration so the opportunity would be there for the rest of us,” Orduna said. “I owed it to those guys to go as far as I could and I in turn tried to open some doors for those guys coming behind.”