Veteran's Affairs Plus W/ David L. Washington

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Las Vegas. Good day Las Vegas. This is Veterans Affairs, plus on 91.5 jazz and more. I'm Dave Washington, your host, and I will be bringing in a dear friend. We're not close, but we're certainly friends and colleagues, and as Dr Dennis O'Neill, we'll get with him shortly. First of all, condolences to the Brian Wilson family. Brian passed away just a week or so ago, and they had his services on Saturday, which my wife, Marcia, was able to attend. And you know, you learn things about people after they pass away. I didn't know Brian had served in the military, but just in Brian was a, he was a, he was a true, true goat, when he came down to to the various athletic things that he participated in. And I'm five eight, he's about probably five six to five eight like me, but he was a real go getter type athlete. So condolences once again, to his family. In terms of birthdays, today's, this week or this month, I should say, will be 100 years since Malcolm l Hodge. Malik was, was born in the United States of America, and believe it or not, on this past was a Mother's Day on the 10th, May 10, my mother, had she been still alive? Would be 95 years old. In fact, we had a celebration of her life on Saturday, because my wife was saying, Well, this is back back in April. I'm sorry. She said, Look, do you know your mom has been gone 20 years? I'm like, what? So I decided, well, we're going to do a little celebration at the house, you know, just for her legacy. And, you know, talk about her and some of the good things she did to instill in her, her children, her seven children, four girls, three boys. Anyway, I decided to do a breakfast Dr O'Neill. And guess what? I forgot to tell my wife. She saw it in a text. She said, You're gonna have a breakfast. You didn't tell me. And guess what I was talking telling the people all the stuff that I was going to cook. All I cooked was a sausage. She bailed me out. She got up early and did everything. So I love my wife and Happy belated mother. Mother's Day, once again to her, my wife, Marcia announcements, Mayor Shelly Berkley and Councilwoman Francis Pulaski will do a walk of honor on Friday, May 23 at 7:30pm at police Memorial Park. And they're going to honor the fallen military folks for their service. And, you know, making that ultimate sacrifice for us Americans. So those who can participate, please feel welcome to go by again. That's February 23 7:30pm at police Memorial Park. Additionally, on Memorial Day, there will be a barbecue hosted by the resource group, military group, at 330 90 East Centennial Parkway. The barbecue is free, and it's a day of gratitude and remembrance of those who served our nation. So that's from 10am to 2pm on 531 and again, we say blessings and thank God for all the good mothers out there, and Happy belated Mother's Day. Now I'd like to go to my dear friend, Dr Dennis O'Neill. Dr O'Neill is a veteran. Dr O'Neill tell us our listening audience, what branch did you serve, and how long

Dennis O'Neal 4:34
I was in the United States Army, and I served. It was a two year enlistment. I was drafted, but if you came back from a combat tour at that time with less than five months to go when you landed, they more or less discharged you within 24 hours. So so even though I was enlisted for two years, I served about eight a year, eight and a half months. Yes, okay, and yeah,

Dave Washington 5:03
what was your job in the middle here?

Dennis O'Neal 5:07
I was trained to be a radio teletype operator, which is a large radio type thing, but when I got overseas, they were short. Some people up on a unit that was attached to the Korean Marine Corps, and I wound up attached to the Korean Marine Corps as a radio operator. So I just, I carried a radio on my back, as opposed to, you know, one of those large radios in the back of a truck. And I did that for about nine and a half months, and then I went back to base camp, and, you know, just did regular radio stuff and went out to and then got discharged the end of January of 1969

Dave Washington 5:52
69 Well, I was drafted in 71 from 71 to 73 I served So Vietnam was winding down when I was drafted. I was a draft

Dennis O'Neal 6:03
What was your MOS Believe it or not, I

Dave Washington 6:05
was to be a auto mechanic. And I told him I didn't want to be a mechanic. I prefer to be a baker, because my mother, I used to watch her bake cakes. And he said, Oh, we don't have that at the school at this Fort Ord, California. They say, Well, we got cook school, and it's got a chapter on baking. I say, I'll take it. So that's how I became a cook. And also, when I got went to Korea, we were attached to a military compound in Pusan, Korea. And believe it or not, I did a lot of I did some logistics work, working in a warehouse, etc, etc, before they assigned me to a microwave camp, way up on a mountain as a cook. And I didn't. I didn't last very long up there, so I came back down to the base camp and got in trouble. Got court martialed. However, I did say, look, how do I get out of here with honorable discharge? They told me what to do. I said, I'll do it. I'm not going out of here with with a bad discharge. So what did you learn here, Doc, that that you could take on to civilian life? Well,

Dennis O'Neal 7:11
I think in your experience, is probably simpler. You learn how much you can tolerate, how much you can much you can tolerate physically, and how much you can tolerate mentally, just, you know, with a lot of stress, and that served me well, I and the the other thing that I learned in radio school was to to be very, very calm on the radio No matter what was happening, because if you got excited, of course, you'd speak too fast and they wouldn't understand you, and you'd have to repeat the message again. And later on, of course, in the fire service, we're on the radio all the time, would you become an officer like you? And so, you know, even in the fire department, people would tell me, I can't believe how calm you are in the radio, but that was where we were trained, right? So those two, three things served me well throughout my whole life. Well,

Dave Washington 8:12
you know, I think one of the two most stressful jobs I used to tell people in my mindset anyway, was being a dispatcher as well as being paramedic, because paramedics, they were not ranking officers, but they had to deal with a lot of stress, and even more so than firefighters, who went out, they went out often, but your medics are going to be running all the time, and I know that with in the case with dispatchers, man, as you mentioned, if You're not calm, the people that you're providing resources for aren't going to understand and know when they can expect those resources to arrive. So, yeah, that's the cool, calm, collective behavior is a must.

Dennis O'Neal 8:55
And you know, they're also dealing with people who really don't know how to assess the situation. You're emotionally involved, you know, Dad fell off a ladder, or mom is having a heart attack, and they're stressed out to the 9/9 degree, right? And they're yelling at you, and you've got to be very calm and make sure that you get all the information, like the address and you know what they doing, and maybe they can begin to administer first aid, you know, before the medics get there. But the dispatchers are golden in my book. Yeah.

Dave Washington 9:31
You know, when I first took over as fire chief, I usually I had heard stories about how some of the officers were treating dispatchers, and I told those BCS, please go out there and let your folks know. Don't do that. These are folks who are your connection with additional resources, and we're going to treat them with dignity and respect. Sometimes people get into positions and they think that they're better, we're all equally important, and that's something that I always try to share. I. Yeah, and put out in the atmosphere to all the personnel on our department that we're all equally important. I don't care if it's a secretary who's drafting those documents to purchase, you know, a brand new engine. We need everyone. So let's all just treat each other with dignity and respect, because we're all extremely important to delivering services to our to our collective community out there. Right

Dennis O'Neal 10:27
on good message, yes, sir.

Dave Washington 10:29
So you served as fire chief. So in fact, what what department did you serve with? How long and what position did you hold in those in your particular fire department or department

Dennis O'Neal 10:40
I was in, yeah, no one was in New Jersey City Fire Department, which is directly across the river from New York City. And I like to tell people that if you fly over that area and you look down on the Statue of Liberty, you will see that the Statue of Liberty is actually in Jersey City. Don't believe those lying New Yorkers. So I started on a ladder company as a firefighter, a lieutenant on a ladder company, that Captain on a ladder company. And then, as you know, it's battalion chief, Deputy Chief. And then about eight, nine months before I retired, I was appointed chief, and it's about 650 people in the department at that time. And it was an acting chief position because they had to call for a civil service exam. And I was offered the position to become superintendent of the United States National Fire Academy, and I left before they administered the exam. So that's how that went down, okay, but it's a great department. Good experience. It was like us service during the war years, when, you know there was just fire seemed to be all over the place, and terrific folks to work with fairly good political support from time to time, but it was excellent, excellent experience. I left there to become superintendent of the National Fire Academy in Emmetsburg, Maryland, and that's where you and I crossed paths, right? And we I was there for almost 20 years. You know, we ran. We began with when I got there, we were training about 15,000 people a year. When I left, we were training 115,000 people a year between our off campus deliveries, our online courses and, of course, our residential program, my 2015 my boss suddenly passed away, you know, just unexpectedly, and they asked me what I wanted to do we my boss and I were the same rank and the same pay. He was just, my boss was just, that's the way it is in the in the federal government, it's called senior executive, and he and I were both senior executives. So I said, Look, if you're asking me what I want to do, I want to stay at the Fire Academy. I loved that job. But if you're asking me, what's good for the organization, I took my boss's job, and that is the senior career fire official for the country. And so you have the academy, you have the data systems, you have public education, fire prevention, and then we had the campus, the whole 26 buildings. It's historic preservation, which in its which in itself is, you know, a handful, right? So I did that for the last five years, and I knew that, you know, my time was going to draw to a close. I didn't know when, but I decided to announce my retirement before the presidential election, and I was successful in getting all of the senior positions hired and locked down before the presidential election in 2020 and so when I got that done, I walked out the door just before COVID, about six weeks before COVID, wow. Yeah, so

Dave Washington 14:25
back, back to your department. Now, that's that was a metro sized department. You know, where their what their staffing is now, thereabouts. Yeah,

Dennis O'Neal 14:36
metros now, I think, is 400 career firefighters, and I don't know 250,000 population, right? I'm not sure those numbers, Dave, but that's pretty close.

Dave Washington 14:49
So your department now, or your former department, how are they doing? As much as you might know about them,

Dennis O'Neal 14:59
they do. Fairly well. We just had a fire chief in Steve McGill, and he retired about a year ago, but he was in for about seven or eight years, and he got only apparatus in the department. He had a couple of firehouses rehabilitated, and, you know, did a lot of good administrative things in terms of training. I think he added one company just for high rise. I mean, they are the seventh, number seven in the country with high rise buildings. Oh, Wow, unbelievable, unbelievable, what the Jersey City waterfront is like. So now chief Jack Johnson is in about a year now, and Jack is a die hard firefighter, and I'm sure he's going to do well. I haven't been back in a while, but I owe him a call I just see how he's doing. So

Dave Washington 15:55
came up through the ranks there. Oh, he did. That's the only way

Dennis O'Neal 16:00
in Jersey City. They don't, they don't pick from the outside at all. Interesting, interesting.

Dave Washington 16:05
So just before they tested, you were offered the position, a position. What position was you offered at the National Fire Academy?

Dennis O'Neal 16:16
Superintendent? You know, my name was on the doorbell. It was, yeah, I had, I had interviewed for the job, and I was one of very few fire chiefs that had an earned doctorate, and it was an education. And at the time, I was teaching in the doctoral program at New York University as an adjunct professor, no, just one time, right? And so, you know, I enjoyed teaching, and it just seemed like everything came together at the right time. Dave, you know, all the little pieces came together and and he offered me the position, and I knew that I would never get the opportunity again if I didn't take it. So I, you know, I took retirement and went to the federal service,

Dave Washington 17:08
and you almost 20 years in in the position, 20

Dennis O'Neal 17:12
years as superintendent, and another five as Deputy Fire Administrator. So I did 25 years with with the federal government as well. So did 25 and 25 Wow,

Dave Washington 17:23
yeah, that's pretty cool. And, you know, a lot of people don't realize, but we are where, where Dr O'Neill was the National Fire Academy is equivalent to Quantico for police. So I, I'd like to get some some feedback or some information out to our general public, with respect to the classes being canceled by 47 sometimes I just refuse to call his name, but got it share with our public the impact that that's going to have, not only on the firefighters, but just in general.

Dennis O'Neal 18:01
Dave, there's a couple of things that occur to me, but the first is that there will be a steady, slow decline in the delivery of services at the local level. Now, you were in Las Vegas, I was in Jersey City, and as if you stayed in the Las Vegas fire department, or if I stayed just in the circle of the Jersey City Fire Department, we would only be as good as the best officer in that department. If you want to get better, if you want your organization to thrive, you have to get outside the organization and go to different places, go to college, go to universities, go to state training academies. Go to the National Fire Academy, where you're going to be working with men and women from different perspectives, that will give you different experiences, that will help you improve. And the example that I like to use that most people would understand is that our country just went through a pandemic, beginning in 2020, COVID. Do you think that your local hospital in Las Vegas or my local hospital here in Emmetsburg, Maryland or Jersey City could do the research to find a COVID vaccine and develop a COVID vaccine? Absolutely not. The answer is no. Okay, there were just some things that the government has the capacity to do that local and state government can't you take major diseases in this country, there's no community that can deal with a local disease. But the federal government can do that. The federal government can develop you think this, I'm going to, you know, use different examples, but the space, you know, the space things and. Uh, the managing airports and regulating interstate commerce and building interstate highways, those are all things that the government does well. Now, one of the things that the government tries to do is to support local government, right? So they have an FBI Academy. They have a National Fire Academy. And the reason that they have that is so that, for example, if there's a potential disaster in Las Vegas, if they have people like you who were trained, who've been outside the department, you know how to handle these things, look at that tremendous tragedy that you had in Las Vegas about five years ago, six years ago, the mass shooting. Right those police officers and firefighters and medics knew how to manage an incident like that through the incident command system that is taught at the federal level, that is not something that local government can develop on their own. And it worked well. And I've seen it work well. I saw it work well at 911 in New York City. I've seen it work well in major disasters all over the country, sure, where they get all different groups of people in to solve a problem. And that is why things like the National Fire Academy, the FBI Academy, are all important to local government. Absolutely,

Dave Washington 21:33
absolutely. So you know, in your in your 20 year span there, or 25 years there with the feds. What are you feeling? And I know certainly one you've already mentioned, when you go from 15,000 to 115,000 students, that is tremendous. So what are some of the other major accomplishment you feel you you did as the superintendent.

Dennis O'Neal 21:59
One was to work with about 120 or 30 colleges and universities around the country to standardize the fire curriculum for the fire degrees at the associate level, the bachelor's level and the master's level. Now, if you go to medical school, the curriculum for medical school is the same in all 50 states, right? And we didn't have that in the fire service when I came to the National Fire Academy. So that was one thing we got done. Another thing that we got done was we began the process of making sure that all of our courses were accredited through the American Council on Education for college credit recommendation so that if you came to the National Fire Academy and took a course, you could transfer the college credit back to your degree programs at home. But the second thing that it did was that it was an objective outside evaluation of our programs so that it wasn't, you know, our own people saying, Yeah, this is good or this needs to be improved. There were people from the outside that came in. College professors would evaluate our curriculum and make sure that it met your academic standards, right. There was testing and things like that. Another thing that we managed to to get done was the development of, we had an executive Fire Officer Program, which is for the top level, but we developed the managing officer program for the mid level, mid career Fire Officers, right? And that was a two year program and and that was very successful. And the students that were going through were required to do a project back home, something that their local chief approved, right, so that it was, you know, a contribution back to the community to help them. So I think the big things we got done right?

Dave Washington 24:04
So tell, tell our listening audience, because I know that there are some firefighters who do listen to the program that really aren't aware of the process, the procedure that one has to go through to actually get accepted into any of the programs at the National Fire Academy. Let me say this too, one of the things that you did that really helped me, and I've mentioned this several times on this show, and I tell people all the time that sometimes you have to put money into your own, you know, education. And an example, I was going for a fire science it was called Fire Science chief. It was a battalion level officer position, basically logistics. I had no, absolutely no clue, but you guys had a two day weekend course in San Diego. My department wouldn't pay for me, so I said, I'm going to do this myself. So I went, you know, rent my room, drove my own vehicle down, and. I took care of my own food, etc, etc. But that prepared me, because I had no idea what what it took to develop specifications if you want to buy an engine company or any, any other fire apparatus that you may need in the fire service. So that was tremendous in itself, so that that weekend type program was something that you actually helped to implement?

Dennis O'Neal 25:22
Oh, good. I'm glad you know it's if I have a little thing I do on let me get back and answer your question. Sure. So the National Fire Academy has an application period. It's open twice a year. I think I just want them to check on the web page right? But the National Fire Academy courses are to train people to be better in their current job. So if you're a fire investigator and you want to be a better one, the National Fire Academy will train you. We work with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and we have an extraordinary fire investigation curriculum. But if you're a firefighter and you want to be a fire investigator, the National Fire Academy won't accept you, because that's your local department's responsibility. They need to train you to be a fire investigator. We'll make you a better one, right? That makes sense. So, yeah, it would be, we can't be the training academy for every local department. We just want to make every local department better, sure. And then they send in an application. It's all electronic now, and it's approved by your chief. Your chief approves it, and then what they do, and this is the thing that's hard sometimes, Dave, is that they throw a random number generator on your zip code. They don't want, they don't want three or three people from the same department, sure, in the same class, right? Okay, so, you know, it's kind of the luck of the draw, how your zip code comes out, right? And they will pay your transportation, your flight, from Las Vegas, wherever you're coming from, right back to em. It's back to Washington, DC. They'll pick you up in a bus, take you up to the academy. You get a free room. Call the TV remote control. Call the TV

Dave Washington 27:22
all the good stuff. Yeah, Las Vegas into our world. This is Veterans Affairs, plus on 91.5 jazz more. We have Dr Dennis O'Neill, who was a former fire chief, as well as the the superintendent of the National Fire Academy. Doc, give a little closing remarks, if you would, we got about two and a half more minutes

Dennis O'Neal 27:43
sure if you want to be a success in almost anything, you need four, five elements. A, you need education. Two, you need training. Three, you need experience. And four, you need continuing education to stay current in your field. The last thing you need, the last thing you need is courage, because if you're going to advance up through the ranks or in any position, you need the courage to go to being uncomfortable again. You need the courage to take a move that you're not sure about Sure, and that advice has served me well. I'm sure it served you well, as well as chief in Las Vegas, absolutely well. Thank you for this opportunity. It's so good to hear your voice. Well, it's been a

Dave Washington 28:33
while. Yes, and I thank you so much. When I heard you on John's program, Chief John Austin, and then I heard you on doing something for the Metro chiefs. I said I got to get a hold of him, because he has still has some some inside information and some great information to be shared with our general public. So once again, this is Veterans Affairs, plus on 91.5 jazz and more, and we had the great, the dear friend, the colleague, Dr Dennis O'Neill, formerly with the National Fire Academy as superintendent. Thank you, Doc,

Dennis O'Neal 29:04
thank you. Dave Good talking to you, likewise you

Music 29:40
all the air till the hate when they stare all the pain that we bear. Oh, you bet.