Fire Chief Retires After 21 Years in Compton

After quietly leading Compton’s Fire Department for more than two decades, Chief Monroe Smith, 73, retired last week. Smith became the first black man to head a fire department in California when he signed on as chief in 1971.

In 21 years, he saw the department’s racial balance shift dramatically. When he arrived in Compton, the force had just seven blacks. Now there are only seven whites in the 75-member department, Smith said.

“The greatest challenge I faced here was getting the work force to match the community it served,” Smith said Wednesday, his last day on the job. “Now we’re trying to recruit more women and Latinos, as the community changes again.”

Born in Shelby, Miss., Smith was reared in Gary, Ind., and joined the Fire Department there in 1948. “Back then in Gary, the fire service was completely segregated,” Smith said. “There were 14 stations and one of them, where I served, was designated as the black station, serving a black community.”

Integration came slowly, but by 1971 Smith had moved up to assistant fire chief and was hoping to head his own department someday. When Compton advertised for a fire chief that year, Smith applied and got the job. He left a city of brick houses and high-rise buildings for an area that featured sunshine nearly year-round and a maze of stucco homes.

Battalion Chief Charles Griswold said his boss “has been an inspiration and a role model for minority people who want to move up in fire service. He was a mentor for all kinds of people, and two of them are now fire chiefs in Oakland and Monrovia.”

After getting up at 5 a.m. daily for 45 years, Smith said one of his first duties in retirement will be training himself to sleep in.

The city’s search for a successor has been narrowed to four applicants, including two from the Compton Fire Department. City Manager Howard Caldwell is expected to make a final decision this month.

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Joan Blackmon, executive director of the Greater Long Beach Girl Scout Council, has received the Frances Hesselbein Award for Excellence from the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. Blackmon was one of five nationwide to receive the award, a scholarship intended to be used to improve a Girl Scout executive staff member’s management skills through academic courses or other learning experiences. Blackmon lives in Long Beach.

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Long Beach Board of Education member Ed Eveland’s novel, “The Quarterback,” has been published by Ashley Press in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. It is his first published novel.

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Robert Kariger will retire as vice president of academic affairs at Long Beach City College on June 30. He joined the college as a mathematics and physical education instructor in 1976 after 19 years with the Long Beach Unified School District.

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Banning quarterback John Ma’ae passed for two touchdowns and ran for a third to help the Pilots, ranked second in the state by Cal-Hi Sports, hand San Pedro a 42-14 defeat.

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Kerrill Kephart, an English teacher at Poly High School in Long Beach, has received $2,500 as a finalist for the Disney Co.’s American Teacher Award.

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