Tina McDermott & Janet Vest, Firefighters at Iowa City Fire Department
"For my first year, I was in men’s clothes." - Tina McDermott
Tina McDermott squirms into a 25-pound firefighter uniform equipped with pants, suspenders and a jacket that nearly reaches her knees.
At 5-foot-3 and just over 100 pounds, McDermott already feels weighed down with the uniform. She adds the air tank on her back, and now is toting about 50 pounds of additional weight.
“My chiropractor says I do not have the body of a 27-year-old,” McDermott, 27, said. “There’s no way I could do this until I’m 50. I’ll be lucky to make it when I’m 40.”
McDermott is the third and latest woman hired by the Iowa City Fire Department. Her predecessor and colleague, Janet Vest, came on a decade before McDermott; and Vest’s predecessor, Linda Eaton, came nearly two decades before that.
McDermott’s gender, age and, above all, height took the male firefighters aback when she joined the force in 2003. She was younger than some of their daughters and pint-sized compared to the rough-and-tough 6-foot-plus guys roaming Station 1 on Gilbert Street.
Iowa City’s blazing history Today, McDermott and Vest are the only two women among 56 firefighters in Iowa City, and two among some 6,500 women out of an estimated 294,000 career firefighters in the United States.
Iowa City’s fire department is older than the state of Iowa, dating back to 1842, three years after the city’s founding and five years before Iowa joined the union. The first fire company was officially formed in 1844, and the early “fire trucks” were nothing more than a horse and cart, according to Lieutenant Ken Brown, battalion chief in Station 1. Horses were kept at a location near present-day Market Street, and the main station sat where the U.S. Bank parking lot on Washington Street is today, Brown said.
Several additional local companies emerged up to 1871, a time when “stations almost competed with each other,” Brown said.
Finally, a citywide department was established by the early 1900s, and by 1972, three stations served Iowa City in separate areas of town. The same stations continue today, with a fourth in the works.
Over the years, as technology advanced the ability to fight fires, horses and carts were traded in for automobiles and trucks. Today’s apparatuses are so large that many stations have needed remodeling to house their collections of fire engines, and hazardous materials vehicles. Over the last 200 years, the firehouse has seen a change, transitioning from a men-only job to a career for determined women.
First woman firefighter brings battles The first woman firefighter on record in the United States was Molly Williams, a slave from New York City who joined an engine company around 1815. Women continued to enter fire services throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, according to the National Association of Women in the Fire and Emergency Services, and after World War II, a surge of women in fire and emergency work emerged.
Iowa City’s first female firefighter, Linda Eaton, was hired in 1977.
“It was atypical but not unheard of,” Brown said.
Eaton’s three-year service on the force was groundbreaking indeed. Controversy erupted surrounding a disagreement between the fire department’s protocol and Eaton’s desire to breastfeed her son while on duty.
According to a January 1979 Associated Press article by The Evening Independent in St. Petersburg, Fl., Eaton said she planned to breastfeed during “personal time” which is often used for activities or sleep, and requested to be exempted from emergency calls.
“It just made me feel stronger than ever about breastfeeding him,” Eaton said in the article. “I still haven’t seen a good reason why I can’t.”
A 24-year-old fellow firefighter--and a man--Jesse King said he agreed with Eaton’s rights.
“The reason they’re so upset is it violates the ‘macho image’ of firefighters,” King said in the same article. “This (nursing a baby) kicks the legs out from under it and lowers it to a human level.”
She won the civil rights case in 1979, but later sued the city of Iowa City for $940,800 for sex discrimination after alleged harassment from male coworkers because of decision to breastfeed, causing her to quit her job, according to a 1984 New York Times brief on the case. She lost the sex discrimination suit in 1984.
Eaton has since moved away from the Iowa City area and few in the department know the full story, although it left a legacy of rumors. McDermott said fewer than five of the men who worked with Eaton at that time remain on the force today, so tensions have settled. But for Janet Vest, who came aboard in 1990, fitting into her job and in with her coworkers was no easy feat. Even members of the community gave her a hard time--some still do to this day--questioning if she was the one who “caused all that trouble.”
At first, many of the men refused to speak to her, and one even insisted she “pull him across the floor” to prove her strength, Vest said. “They really tested me.”
She blames Eaton. “It might be rude to say, but she was not the first female firefighter, she was not a team player,” Vest said. “She really ruined it for me.”
Brown, likewise, thinks Eaton’s main goal was to be the “first woman firefighter,” whereas Vest and McDermott “just wanted to be firefighters in general.”
More than a firefighter Vest, 41, says she’s a mother first, and then a career firefighter. She could walk away from fighting fires at any time, she said, because there are plenty of jobs but only one family.
The mother of five has seen some ups and downs in her 19-year career, especially after joining the team post-Eaton. “People didn’t trust me,” she recalled. “They didn’t know what they could say around me, afraid I would tell on them. I had to gain their trust.”
In her early years, Vest also faced lots of pranks. They weren’t malicious, she said--on the order of hiding her belongings or putting her hairbrush in the toilet. It’s when she started returning the pranks that the men realized she could be one of the gang, and she now tests the male rookies.
“Now that I’ve gotten older and wiser, I stay my ground and tell them they have to prove to me that they deserve to be here,” Vest said.
She believes the men see her as just another firefighter on the force, and that’s just how they look at new hires.
“It’s the best person for the job, doesn’t matter if you’re a man or woman,” Vest said.
Interviewed at the Station 3 firehouse on Lower Muscatine Avenue on a chilly, drizzly March day, Vest confessed she was wary because she did not want to talk about Eaton, whom she refers to as “that person.”
Vest relaxed in a navy blue firefighter sweatsuit and stocking feet. Her brunette bangs hang low, almost over her eyes, and her smile causes mild crinkles around her eyes and mouth.
With nearly two decades on the force, she recalls being an ambitious 23-year-old interested in firefighting after serving some time on a volunteer department. To train for the agility test, she would strap a tank to her back and pound wood with a sledgehammer in the backyard. She says her only struggle between home and work has been finding childcare.
Vest is married to Iowa City police officer Tim Vest, and since she and her husband both work in stressful, violent and sometimes graphic situations and environments, they try to harness those experiences to teach their children, she said.
“I want to make sure they’re safe and taken care of, make sure they’re raised correctly and that they’re good, productive citizens, not someone the police is picking up,” Vest said.
Vest said her children were “born into” her lifestyle and 24-hour work shifts. She even comes to Safety Village at her children’s school in North Liberty in her firefighter gear so her children’s classmates can see what she does for a living.
“I don’t have hobbies, I have children,” she joked. When she’s not in uniform, she dishes up food in the her children’s school cafeterias or cheers for them at athletic events.
Though she emphasizes her role as a mom away from the firehouse, at work she holds her own. Brown said some guys have to “swear enough just to keep up with Vest.”
“I’m an open person, I say what I think, which can cause problems and solve problems,” Vest said. “If I feel offended, if someone did me wrong, something didn’t go right, I’ll sit down and tell them how I feel. It’s about not being afraid to make mistakes, and learn from them, as long as you learn from them, is fine.”
Community criticism The unsettling history of Linda Eaton has still left its mark on Iowa City, no matter how good Vest and McDermott are at their jobs.
“We get asked all the time, ‘Are you going to try to breast feed your baby,’” McDermott said with a sneer. “It’s really ignorant. It hasn’t been as bad lately, but some people that lived here when that happened aren’t over it yet.”
The community reaction to women firefighters has yet to catch up to those in the firehouse.
McDermott often meets dropped jaws and furrowed brows when she divulges her work. “It takes all sizes,” McDermott said. “It’s not like there’s a height or size requirement.”
Vest is a little less patient with clueless adults.
“I have more discrimination from adults than children,” she said bluntly. “The parents actually need more education than the kids do, because the kids already assume I’m a regular firefighter.”
Sometimes when she or McDermott answers the phone at the firehouse, the person at the end of the line assumes they are merely secretaries.
Joining a staff of men was not easy for the wives to swallow, either. Vest said many firefighter wives were skeptical of her being hired, because rumors had surfaced that Eaton had been engaging in affairs with the men on her team.
Now that hostility has smoothed over with Vest’s experience and dedication to her own marriage and children, she and McDermott take part in e-mail groups, recipe exchanges and activities with the wives of their male counterparts. McDermott admits through it all that without Vest, she wouldn’t be as comfortable in the position.
“I owe everything to Janet,” McDermott said. “She paved the way for me.”
Small stature, big confidence McDermott’s dedication as a career firefighter has clearly paid off. In February 2009 she was promoted to lieutenant of Station 2 off Melrose Avenue. She is the first female lieutenant of the company but does not make her gender the claim to fame.
“I just wanted to be a lieutenant,” she said. “And I got lucky. I got a great assignment, a great team, a great job.”
McDermott got her start in firefighting in her hometown of Dubuque, Iowa, where she graduated from high school and joined the volunteer fire department to work alongside her mother, Sharon, who was an emergency room nurse and volunteer paramedic. The daughter’s first medical call--a “full code,” or breathless and without a pulse--was with her mother.
“I just wanted to do something that worked with people,” McDermott said.
One year into her associate’s degree in fire science at Madison Area Technical College in Wisconsin, she was called for the physical agility test in Iowa City. The test, which requires participants to crawl through an attic simulator, raise and carry ladders and pull a 200-foot hose, is required before advancing to a full-hire of the department. McDermott passed with flying colors.
Joining Iowa City’s team, McDermott completed her associate’s degree at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa City, and in February 2009, received a bachelor’s degree from Western Illinois University.
In her downtime, McDermott enjoys spending time with her boyfriend, an Iowa City police officer. She also enjoys roller derby, a new hobby she picked up when the Old Capitol Rollers came together late last year.
“I haven’t been able to make it to many practices since the promotion,” she said. “But they understand. I’m even trying to recruit some of those girls to be firefighters. My friend Laura was made to be a firefighter.”
Her derbymates gave her a great roller derby name--Tinamite--for her size, tenacity and carrot-red curly hair. McDermott smiles when she says her new nickname. She loves the toughness of the sport, but also the charitable work they do. In late February she and her teammates served a chili supper on skates, and in late March the derby team volunteered to clean plates at the Iowa City Fire Department fish fry.
“We just want to go out and do stuff in the community,” she said.
Off her wheels, McDermott is just as spunky with her fellow firefighters. McDermott exchanges jabs and roughhouses like the rest. On a snowy day in January, she and Lieutenant Brian Rohert threw snowballs as co-worker Chris Lacey backed the truck into the station. While throwing playful insults back and forth, McDermott shook her head at Lacey.
“Lacey loves me for the same reason he hates me, because I give him shit,” she said with a devious grin.
Same team, big differences The firehouse is where teams of firefighters live on their shifts. They eat together, play together, watch TV together and work together. A large dorm-like room houses beds with small partitions, the only privacy between firefighters on a shift. Bathrooms used to be unisex until late 2008 when the third station of Iowa City Fire Department added a women’s bathroom. All three are now fully equipped with men’s and women’s restrooms.
While working together at Station 1, McDermott and Vest’s bathroom was all female. A decorative shower curtain, pastel-colored hand towels and cosmetics like hair mousse and body spray could be found throughout. The men’s bathroom looked no different than a public restroom.
But restrooms are not the only thing separating men from women in the Iowa City Fire Department. There are differences physically in terms of strength (and weaknesses). The training and physical agility tests are no different for males or females. The weight is the same, the expectations do not change and everything has to be done quickly and without struggle. Those attempting the test have the opportunity to train two or three weekends in advance to get used to the equipment used in the exam. McDermott hired a personal trainer in Madison before her agility tests in Iowa City.
“It’s upper and lower body—a lot of upper,” McDermott said. “A few things I had to learn to do differently to compensate, and since we’ve given the tests and helped out at the practice weekends, I try to pass that [advice] on to people my size.”
McDermott does have more than gender working against her. Her petite frame, however, should not be stereotyped. Brown contests that McDermott is much stronger than him and could probably “lift him over her head.”
Vest, on the other hand, finds herself compensating. Her upper body is not as strong as a man, she admits, so she uses her legs for situations that call for a tight grasp or heavy weight.
“The equipment is also built for men, which makes it hard,” Vest said. “When I first started, my gear was men’s gear. They have very limited women’s size boots and pants and things like that. For my first year, I was in men’s clothes.”
Many years ago, Vest said a friend and her parents came to visit, and the parents were surprised when she wasn’t masculine. “That’s what they were expecting,” she said. “I think that idea is going out the window, that it has to be someone that’s burly, or lesbian. That’s not it. You have to be healthy and strong to an extent, not Mr. or Mrs. T.”
As a working mother and with four pregnancies on the job (her first time was twins), Vest has had stints of “light duty”--mainly consisting of office and desk work. She can’t stand it, she said, because she missed fighting fires.
“When you come back [from giving birth] you’re full time. You just climb right back in. It’s not their responsibility to give me time off, I have to prepare my body,” Vest said.
Another difference between the sexes is patience, something Vest takes seriously.
“I think women have much more patience, bedside manner patience,” she said. “We notice little things like, ‘Hey, can I put your slippers on for you first,’ and things like that. Not that every man slaps them in a chair and walks away, but in my experiences, we tune in the comfort things.”
Vest said after a tough call, such as a call involving a child, she usually needs five minutes to “just be alone and be quiet,” but often she needs to “babble and vent, too.”
“Everyone knows they’re affected but no one wants to admit it,” Vest said.
McDermott said the men on the force consult her and Vest for advice on anniversary or birthday gifts for their wives, or even for small favors like babysitting. “I called Darrall [Brick, fellow firefighter] once. My wash machine was broken and I couldn’t reach my boyfriend,” she said.
“I don’t know a guy on the force that wouldn’t work with Vest or McDermott,” Brown said. “There are a lot of women I wouldn’t want to work with, but there are a lot of men, too.”
Ultimately they work of a firefighter comes down not to sex or gender, emotions or body structure, but just doing the job.
“It’s always gonna be a man’s job, and often a young man’s job,” Brown said. “But there’s always room for women.”