Friends, normally I try to offer you support in difficult times but tonight I’m finding myself in need of a shoulder to lean on. On Wednesday I traveled to Columbia to visit an old friend in the Fire Service who was gravely ill. In addition to seeing him, I was able to be there with many other friends who all knew him well. I was taken back to almost forty years ago when we all became brothers in the Fire Service. We shared some great times over the years, not only in the Fire Service but also in our personal lives. Yesterday however, it was to be different because we lost our friend as he slipped away after a brief but courageous battle with cancer. Sometimes relationships can be established in a short while, but after forty years of traveling through life together I realized that this place we call “brotherhood” is something that does not come easily. It involves love, understanding, confidence, trust and yes, sometimes disappointment, sadness and forgiveness.
As we all grieve the loss of our friend, we collectively agreed that he deserved to be honored for being our friend and for all of his contributions to the Fire Service we all know and love. So, I guess that I will process my grief in this writing by sharing my thoughts of our friend, James A. Bowie. I am choosing to share this on this page rather than my personal page in hopes of reaching many of my younger firefighting brothers and sisters who may not have known Jim.
I first met James Bowie, “Jim” to all of us, back in the mid 70s when he was a Citadel cadet and an auxiliary firefighter for the Charleston Fire Department. Jim began his love of the Fire Service then and when he graduated, we were able to convince him to join us at the North Charleston District Fire Department as a recruit. He was in our first ever dedicated recruit class in 1976. For the short time we worked together, it became clear to me that Jim was destined to move on and move on he did. During his Fire Service career, he would become the Director of the South Carolina Fire Academy and the Legislative Agent for the South Carolina State Firefighters Association and also served as the Association’s Executive Director. Jim was a true visionary. Instead of “thinking outside the box” Jim “lived outside the box”. He had an unbelievable ability to take the most difficult projects and plan and work them with amazing results. Even after leaving Charleston, he returned as the leader of the South Carolina State Firefighters Association the morning after the Charleston 9 tragedy to put together a group that would guide the Charleston Fire Department and our entire community through some of the darkest days of the Fire Service in our State. And, to my younger firefighting brothers and sisters I spoke of earlier, know that much of what you enjoy today as far as safety, training and professional development can be attributed to Jim’s influence.
There is so much more that could be said about Jim’s contributions to the Fire Service but today, Chief Bobby Halton dedicated the 2015 FDIC Conference in Indianapolis to Jim’s memory. In a firefighter’s world, that’s about as good as it gets. Rest easy, my brother, until we meet again.
Gerald