Remembering Leroy Bennett

The fire community lost a dedicated hero, mentor and teacher with the passing of Leroy Bennett, former engineer for the Vallejo Fire Department and founder of our Fire Cadet Program. In the former he protected the citizens of Vallejo for decades and was a mentor and teacher of young firefighters throughout his career. But his role as the founder of the Cadet program was where his mentorship shaped the foundation for hundreds of young men and women across the nation who were able to realize their dreams of becoming a firefighter.
But it was the lives of the thousands of young men and women who never were able to get a job in the fire service that he made his greatest impact. They entered a program where they were given a chance to join a solid group of professionals who accepted them into their fire service family, for some young people the first family they had, and acted as mentors, teachers, disciplinarians and councilors that touched the community in a myriad of ways. Countless young people grew up in this Fire Family and went on to careers in other areas but always having those life lessons and  bonds that last to this day, 40 years later.
I had the honor of growing up in a neighborhood where several firefighters lived including my father and Uncle and I have known the Bennett family my whole life, growing up with his five children. Lee was one of those larger than life heroes to us all. Just like my dad. And in the 70’s when I was about 15 years old Lee asked a group of neighborhood kids including his son Scott to attend a meeting in the fire chief’s office! Here were six young men who all had long hair and were more interested in girls and sports than anything else, but we were all were intrigued. We walked out of there members of one of the first Boy Scout Fire Explorer Programs run by a Fire Department in the state. And that was the start of a program that helped me to get the skills I needed for a career in the Fire Service that allowed me to raise my family in the city I love and where I grew up.
It’s a great thing when you can work side by side with your childhood heroes, and Lee was all of that and more. After his retirement on May 13, 1989, Lee remained active in the explorer program continuing to mentor future generations and his legacy will live on forever. But it is also one of the toughest things in life to have to attend the services for firefighters that you worked with, no matter when or where, but is made even more crushing when that person also happens to be a childhood hero like Lee was to me and many others.

Jon Riley,
retired Vallejo fire captain

Sharing is caring!