Retirement beckons for Rincon Valley Fire Chief Doug Williams

Doug Williams wasn’t out fighting fires at age 14 but, being a good scout, he was preparing.

A child of two of Sonoma County’s oldest families, Doug was a Boy Scout who leaped at the chance to become an Explorer with the Rincon Valley fire district.

He hadn’t yet graduated from Montgomery High when he began answering calls as a volunteer with the then-rural fire company. The year was 1972.

He’s seen so much change since then. But at least one thing has remained constant: when a siren-wailing fire truck pulls up to a scene, it’s likely that someone there is having the worst day of his or her life.

Now 60 and preparing to retire as one of the county’s most experienced and respected fire chiefs, Doug finds it easy to say what he’s enjoyed most of his 40-plus years as a firefighter.

“It’s just been helping people,” he said.

Though he’ll phase in his retirement, this is his final week as chief of the Rincon Valley district and of the county’s Central Fire Authority, which also serves Windsor.

Doug, who looks forward to missing fewer suppers with his wife, Jodie, provided a bit of insight into the type of firefighter and chief he’s been when he recalled a surprising and instructive moment decades ago at one of his first medical calls.

A man had suffered a heart attack at home. Doug and the other responding firefighters had to move furniture out the way as they knelt beside the fellow and tried to revive him

They could not. Before leaving the house, Doug followed a more senior firefighter’s lead and helped to return the furniture to its original positions.

He’s never forgotten that amid her shock and sorrow, the man’s widow thanked the firefighters for their effort - and for putting the furniture back.

The encounter clearly caused a young Doug Williams to ponder how he must treat people upon bursting into their lives on perhaps the worst day ever.

SUCH A DAY was Saturday, the day after Christmas, in Guerneville. The stench of char and molten matter rose from the ruins of the town’s longtime community health center.

But the healing has begun.

St. Joseph Health, operator of Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, rushed over a loaned clinic on wheels. Locals grateful to West County Health Centers delivered pizza and other foods to its weary staffers. Cash donations for reconstruction began to flow into the centers’ administrative offices on Guerneville’s Mill Street.

“The main thing we want people to know,” said Mary Szecsey, chief of the West County centers, “is we’re still here.”

Anyone who might help rebuild the Russian River Health Center, or anyone needing its help, should check out www.wchealth.org.

RESTORE THE DRAGON: A happy ending may be nigh for the paint-on-tiles mural of two dragons alongside Santa Rosa’s downtown creek trail. The dragons sustained so much vandalism to their eyes and heads that the figures were remade to make it appear their heads are tucked around a corner or beneath the sidewalk.

That reworking upset local Chinese-Americans who said that to portray dragons without heads is culturally offensive.

I’m looking into a proposal to alter the dragons once again, this time by painting their heads on vandal-resistant steel well out of easy reach.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.