Leaders We Would Like to Meet - Paul Gleason

Paul Gleason's career as a firefighter spanned parts of five decades, starting as an 18 year-old crew member on a southern Callifornia hotshot crew and culminating as a college professor of wildland fire science.

Paul grew up in southern California, the son of a traveling evangelist preacher. He became an accomplished rock climber in his teens and continued to climb through his entire life. In 1964, he got his first job as a firefighter on the Angeles National Forest. He continued to work there on the Dalton Hotshot Crew through 1970, with the exception of a one-year stint in the U.S. Army. From 1971 to 1973, he went to college and earned a degree in mathematics. During this time he also traveled and climbed extensively.

He returned to work as a firefighter in 1974 as the assistant foreman for a 20-person regional reinforcement crew on the Okanogan National Forest. Then in 1977, he took the job as the assistant superintendent of the Zig Zag Hotshot Crew on the Mount Hood National Forest, moving up to superintendent in 1979. He remained in that role until 1992. He then transferred to the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest as a district fire management officer and eventually became the forest fire ecologist. His next move was to another fire agency in 1999 as the deputy fire management officer for the Rocky Mountain Region of the National Park Service. Mandatory retirement at age 55 took Paul away from the federal fire service in 2001 and into academia. For the next two years, Paul was the adjunct professor for the Wildland Fire Service Program at Colorado State University. He remained in his role until he lost his battle with cancer in 2003.

During his career, Paul Gleason was front and center on three significant fires of the modern era - the Loop Fire in 1966, the Dude Fire in 1990, and the Cerro Grande Fire in 2000. His role on these three touchstone fires gave rise to his passion for firefighter safety and the "student of fire" philosophy that he crusaded for. He was a leader of firefighters and he was a leader for the wildland fire service. Paul's contributions are far reaching. He teamed up with D. Douglas Dent and pioneered the professional tree falling program for wildland firefighters. He developed the LCES concept that has become the modern foundation of firefighter safety. He was very involved in the development of fire behavior training...with a focus on taking the scientific aspects of extreme fire behavior and making them understandable concepts for every firefighter. He reached outside the fire service and collaborated with experts, such as Dr. Karl Weick, who were doing research in the realm of decision making and high reliability organizations.

In the final tally, as always, Paul was a role model "student of fire." To the very end of his life he was engaged in teaching and learning about fire. The opportunity to ask Paul these questions about leadership came the day before he died at his insistence.

Read the complete interview with Paul at http://www.fireleadership.gov/toolbox/interviews/leaders_PaulGleason.html.

Interview an exemplary wildland fire leader and submit to
leadership_feedback@nifc.blm.gov for consideration. Interview formats and questions to ask can be found at
http://www.fireleadership.gov/toolbox/documents/leaders_meet.html.