Content area
Full Text
Paul Gleason's career as a firefighter spanned parts of five decades. He started as an 18-year-old crew member on a southern California hotshot crew and culminated his career as a professor of wildland fire science at Colorado State University.
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 throughout his entire life. In 1964, he got his first job as a firefighter on the Angeles National Forest, CA. He continued to work there on the Dalton Hotshot Crew through 1970, with the exception of a 1-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, OR. Then, in 1977, he took the job as the assistant superintendent of the Zigzag Interagency Hotshot Crew on the Mount Hood National Forest, OR, 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's fire ecologist.
Paul's 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. In 2001, mandatory retirement at age 55 took Paul away from the Federal fire service and into academia. For the next 2 years, Paul was adjunct professor for the wildland fire science program at Colorado State University. He remained in this role until he lost his battle with cancer in 2003.
During his career, Paul Gleason was front and center on three well-known 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 a leader for the wildland fire service.
Paul's contributions are far reaching. He teamed up with D. Douglas Dent to...