A cadet at 15, Utica Fire Chief Ben Brown became chief at 26

The overhead view wasn’t pretty. Utica had been slammed with a tornado, and Ben Brown’s hometown was in shambles.

He won’t forget the sight anytime soon.

There’s nobody else who cares about the fire department the way he does, and it’s always been that way.”

—  Capt. Robbyn Partain, Utica Fire Protection District and EMS

But from atop the aerial ladder, the 16-year-old had an epiphany. A few months earlier, he’d been hectored into joining the Utica Fire Protection District as a cadet. Now, in spring 2004, he knew his future lay in fire and emergency medical services. Everything had fallen into place.

“I thought, ‘This is cool. I want to do this for a living,’” Brown said. “I love it. I love to help the community I grew up in.”

And so began an unusually swift ascent up the ranks of an Illinois Valley fire department. Soon after earning an associate degree in fire science from Joliet Junior College, Brown was made a lieutenant. By age 26, he was chief.

Utica fire Capt. Robbyn Partain was a year behind Brown at La Salle-Peru High School and remembers when Brown was made chief. Partain recalled how young he was, and there were questions about how the veteran firefighters would take orders from a fresh face.

Then again, there weren’t many suitors for the chief’s post.

“Honestly, we needed somebody to step up, and we all knew Ben someday would be chief,” Partain said. “There’s nobody else who cares about the fire department the way he does, and it’s always been that way.”

It was coincidental that a tornado would dictate Brown’s career path because young Ben Brown initially wanted to be a TV weatherman. He gobbled up forecasts and shined in the classroom, more so than on the ball field or in the gym.

Firefighting wasn’t something he contemplated until summer 2003, when then-Utica fire Chief Dave Edgcomb spotted him in obvious need of something to do.

“What are you doing besides agitating your mother?” Edgcomb tweaked him.

Edgcomb told Brown to report to the fire station for a demonstration on using an air pack. It was a sufficiently engaging lesson for Brown, then 15, to sign on as a cadet.

“I thought, ‘Well, it’s something to do,’” Brown recalled. “I didn’t quite know what I was getting myself into. I just went along with it.”

He still was along for the ride on the evening of April 20, 2004, when the La Salle Fire Department relayed a tornado warning to Utica first responders. This one, they warned, was going to hit the village.

Brown and a few others took cover in the Utica fire station, then located on Mill Street across from the Milestone Restaurant and Lounge. They closed the bay doors and waited out the storm.

When they lifted the bay doors, the Milestone was gone. A pile of rubble stood in its place. A frantic search began for those who’d taken cover inside. Eight bodies would be carried out.

Brown was respectful of the bereaved, but the disaster gave him direction. When he finished high school two years later, he enrolled in a summer emergency medical technician course. The training was physically arduous, but he was a natural at comforting trauma victims.

“I love to talk,” Brown said. “Anybody who knows me knows I don’t stop talking.”

By the time he completed his associate degree, the senior officers at Utica had begun retiring, and Utica needed replacements. Brown’s future as chief was obvious to everybody.

Almost.

“The guys used to harass me and say, ‘You’re going to be chief here someday,’” Brown said. “And I told them, ‘No, that’s never going to happen.’

“And here I am.”

Brown remembered turning a few heads walking into his first meeting of the Illinois Valley fire chiefs. He was the youngest chief by at least a dozen years. Andy Bacidore, a retired La Salle fire chief, said Brown may have endured some good-natured ribbing, but everyone had known Brown and his love for firefighting.

“When people get promoted, they can get too big for their britches. That wasn’t Ben. He was humble, and he was aggressive in seeking knowledge,” Bacidore said. “He’s not afraid to learn. I noticed that right away.”

Oglesby fire Chief Ron Popurella was among the chiefs who took Brown under his wing. Brown grew into the job nicely, Popurella said, and had earned respect in Utica.

“He’s a good leader,” Popurella said. “The guys in his department know that he knows what he’s doing.”

Having a young chief held another advantage: Since Brown still was receiving advanced training, he made sure that the rest of his first responders were offered the same resources. Brown might have learned on the job, but the rest of the company learned the same fire-EMS skills and at much the same pace.

“We set the bar high,” Brown said, “and that’s where we’re going to keep it.”

Training yielded an unexpected benefit. He scheduled water operations training at the Illinois Valley YMCA. On duty that day was a lifeguard supervisor named Jessica Adams. The ever-chatty Brown talked her into going out for dinner. Brown waited until Adams was supervising another water-ops training session and then popped the question.

As chief, Brown hates the paperwork, which is substantial. The company numbers 38 personnel, big for a community Utica’s size. What he loves is the unique nature of emergency calls. Each time the bell rings presents a new challenge.

“No call is ever the same,” he said. “It’s always something different.”

When he and Jessica needed help, the people in Utica wasted no time answering the bell. They were expecting their first child a few weeks before Christmas 2018, when Jessica went into premature labor. There were long hospital stays into the new year before she gave birth to a girl they named Lorelei and nicknamed their “Little Peanut.”

Lorelei was indeed little – only 3 pounds, 15 inches at birth – and with heart and brain defects. She never left the hospital. After 87 days and a hastily arranged baptism, the Browns said a tough goodbye. From start to finish, the village of Utica swamped them with food, supportive calls and little favors.

“People were awesome,” Brown said. “I can’t describe how thankful I am.”

Partain said the support for the Brown family was a foregone conclusion. She and her peers were heartbroken for the bereaved parents and then delighted when Jessica later gave birth to a healthy son. Another child is on the way.

“We all work together, but we’re all friends – we really are a family,” Brown said.