The firehouse firsts — Ridley, Wilson and Davie

1961–2007 · THE DEPARTMENT'S BARRIERS, BROKEN FROM INSIDE

Richard Ridley Jr.: Richard Jerome Ridley Jr. was sworn in on 7 October 1961 as Fort Wayne's first African American firefighter. The city's own proclamation of 5 November 2017 — Richard Jerome Ridley Jr. Day — recounts the career the department's record kept: he persevered despite bias; was promoted to captain in 1971; worked to hire other minorities; became district chief in 1974, shaping the department's fitness framework; was elected in 1975 the first African American vice president of the Indiana Fire Instructors Association; and retired in 1985. His brother-by-service in the family's second generation of the work, the arson investigator Barker Davie Jr., is named in the Smiley Collection as a top arson investigator in the United States and Canada.

Wilson and Davie: The Smiley Collection names Genois Young Wilson as the first woman firefighter of the Fort Wayne Fire Department; the collection's entry, as reached here, gives the honor without a date, and none is invented for it. Tim Davie — Barker Davie's brother — entered the department and rose through its ranks over twenty-seven years to become, in 2000, its first African American chief, serving as fire chief and co-director of public safety through 2007. Weeks after the attacks of 11 September 2001 he went with Police Chief York to Ground Zero, a service the two chiefs were still recounting twenty-five years later; after the department he oversaw emergency planning and security for a hospital network, and he sits in retirement on the city's Board of Public Safety — the body that oversees the department he once commanded. The fire service's firsts, like the police department's, came late and from inside: Ridley's forty years of pressure on the hiring line stand behind both.

Sources:

1. City of Fort Wayne, mayoral proclamation of 5 November 2017 — Ridley's swearing-in, promotions and retirement, as the city's record states them.
2. Allen County Public Library, Marsha Smiley Collection — Genois Young Wilson, first woman firefighter; Tim Davie, first African American fire chief; Barker Davie Jr.
3. ASSP Anthony Wayne Chapter biography — Davie's twenty-seven years, chief and co-public safety director 2000–2007, Board of Public Safety service. WANE, 2026 — Davie and York at Ground Zero. Hoosier Lottery, "Lifelong Service," 14 May 2025 — Davie's career and retirement.