EARLY IN MY CAREER, I gravitated toward more senior, experienced members of the department. I wanted to learn everything about the fire service, and I was lucky to have a great cast of characters to set me on the right path. Most of these mentors were the salty instructor types who would take me along as a helper for live fire training. They were the cool kids and the “in” crowd in our culture. One of the guys who wasn’t in that crowd was Tom Hudgens, who was 19 years older than me. I was closer in age to his kids than to him. Tom was a good, well-liked firefighter but he wasn’t into traveling to conduct training classes, attending training at the state academy, or spending every off day at the fire station. Tom spent his off-duty time as a family man and house painter and was always in school pursuing a degree in psychology. He was our shift’s cook (and a damn good one); loved golf and art; wrote poetry; and had an incredibly dry, sarcastic wit.
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Interested in cooking, I asked him to teach me. He started me off helping with breakfast and I worked my way up to sous chef for the more elaborate meals. Soon, I was cooking when he was off and splitting cooking time when he was there. Tom’s kids were in school during the day. He asked me to join him on the golf course and I accepted. He had a family membership at a local course, and he took me on as if I were his son. No one knew the difference. We went the mornings we got off work except for weekends. He immediately went into teaching mode after he played a few rounds with me and, over the course of two summers, took me from a 30-plus handicap to a 10 and witnessed my all-time best round score of 78.
Back at the station, Tom was always writing. He might have been working on a college paper or penning a poem— some serious and some fun limericks about something that one of us had done earlier in the day. He was a legend for his prolific logbook entries. Instead of just covering who was on duty and what incidents we responded on, he would often tell a complete story starting out the morning with, “Today the boys in blue arrived at 0700 ….” At home, he was working on his art—sometimes impressionism, some abstract, and the occasional pencil sketch.
Our police chief became the city manager and made plans for consolidation between the city and county fire departments (but not the police departments). The plans were not favorable to us, and Tom solicited me to help create a morale-boosting underground newsletter, The Great Ostrich. The name itself was a satirical reference to leaders having their heads in the sand. His use of satire inspired me to contribute, and together we brought laughter during exceedingly difficult times. These were the first articles I ever wrote, and Tom gladly published them under the OPI (Ostrich Press International) moniker.
Consolidation was approved and Tom, Marcus Hill, and I worked the last shift of the Conyers Fire Department’s existence. Officially closing the books on history, July 1, 1990, at 0700 hours was the last time we ever worked together. I moved on to the big city (Atlanta), and Tom finished school and left the fire service, becoming a full-time family counselor. Not long after that, Tom was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. He continued his cooking, art, and writing but could not keep up the golf. We stayed in touch over the years with an occasional lunch. Tom’s kids grew up and started their own families, making him a proud grandpa.
In 2022, Parkinson’s had a complete grip on him. His wife called to let me know time was running out. I went to see him. We sat there and I read several of our old newsletter articles to him. Even though he couldn’t move or talk, there were loud grunts that had become his new form of laughter. Tom passed away a few weeks later. Ironically, the day after his memorial service, I accepted the job as editor in chief of this magazine.
Until then, I had only looked at Tom as a good friend. I had gone on to another 30 years focusing on operations, incident management, and being an instructor—things my salty mentors instilled in me early on. Now here I was, retired from the department, rediscovering golf (a very perishable skill, by the way), loving to cook, with dozens of published articles, and about to become editor in chief.
Suddenly, a different perspective of our relationship emerged. Would I have ever taken up golf? Would I have ever learned to cook? Would I have ever started authoring articles? Would I have ever had the chance to be editor of an iconic publication? Without the incidents to respond to and shift training to conduct, I was now back to just doing things Tom had been a part of.
You never know who will influence you the most or who will provide experiences that will influence you at some point down the road. It was unlikely a guy in his early 20s had much in common with a 42-year-old renaissance man, but that’s the magic of fire station life. It shows the value that each character cast in our lives can play if we let them.
One day, you will realize who your unexpected mentors are and why your paths crossed. Those of you just getting started, be on the lookout for people who are not exactly like-minded, maybe a little different than the cool kids of the moment, maybe not into the latest thing, but uniquely interesting. Hang out with them, and you will have found your own version of Tom Hudgens!
