Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory Chief Joel Shilling, left, gives Fire Marshal Jeremy Williams the oath of office for his promotion, with Lt. Tony Shilling, right, looking on. Williams was promoted to fire marshal from lieutenant, and Tony was promoted to lieutenant from firefighter.

Text and Photos
By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — Promotions don’t come easily at the Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory, but with several retirements and departures from the fire department, there’s been a few lately.

For two firefighters who earned promotions recently, a ceremony took place Monday, June 17, at Station 15.

Jeremy Williams was promoted from lieutenant to fire marshal, and Tony Shilling moved from firefighter to lieutenant.

Williams was promoted to lieutenant two months ago when Joel Shilling was promoted from lieutenant to fire marshal after the retirement of Fire Marshal Joe Fretz. When Joel was promoted to fire chief after the resignation of Brian Mayo, Williams was named as the next fire marshal last month, with Tony moving up to lieutenant.

Tony has been with WWFT for seven years as a firefighter. For him, the promotion to lieutenant means “leadership and servant leadership. I wouldn’t be here where I’m at without the guys that I work with throughout the years, so I owe it to them. It’s just a spot to help lead and grow the department,” he stated.
Describing his job as lieutenant, Tony said, “For the day of the shift that I work, I’m in charge of station (17) and the apparatus that we run out of there. And then I make decisions for tactical reasons and station reasons. Just anything that needs decided on, it falls on me.”

He said he considers himself a “doer” more than a future chief, but being promoted to lieutenant is the next step in the progression of leadership at the fire service.

Along with being lieutenant, Tony, who will be 36 next month, serves on the dive and technical rescue teams. He has served as a volunteer firefighter at Leesburg, too.

What he enjoys about being a member of the fire department are the guys he works with.

“It’s one of the best. It’s just a big brotherhood. It’s like going to work for 24 hours and hanging out with your friends,” he said.

Tony and his wife Sasha have a son, Zander, 7, and a daughter, Oaklynn, 5.

Williams, 40, said the last four weeks have been interesting as far as getting used to his work schedule. A fire marshal works Monday through Friday instead of the 24 hours on, 48 hours off shift work, plus the fire marshal is on call weekends.

Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory Chief Joel Shilling, left, gives Lt. Tony Shilling his oath of office Monday.

“So, I’m home every evening and weekends. So that’s definitely different and something I can get used to. I think my family enjoys me being home every night and every weekend. So, that’s been the biggest part of it, trying to learn the job. There’s so much that goes into this position, I’m just scratching the surface,” Williams said.

There are a number of certifications required to be a fire marshal, which are safety officer, fire inspector 1 and 2, and fire investigator. He is still working on getting his fire investigator certification.

Williams said he is “absolutely” continuing to learn about his job.

“As far as what goes into this job, it’s every day. It’s like, ‘Hmm. I didn’t know fire marshals did that.’ So being on this side, the administration side, it’s completely different,” he said.

Having Joel around, along with Fretz on speed dial and one of his best friends as the fire marshal in Goshen, has been a big help for Williams in his new job.

“The fire marshal is a very prestigious position. Like Joel said here a while back, he told me that a lot of people think the fire marshal is the fire chief because I’m the one out dealing with businesses every day and in the public eye, versus he feels like he’s behind the computer all day. And the people think the fire marshal is the chief, even though that’s not the case,” Williams said, adding that he feels pretty good about his promotion.

Becoming fire marshal has been like a “fresh start,” he said, because there’s so much he doesn’t know and he’s learning every day in the position.

He’s been full time at WWFT for 18 years. He married his wife, Alicia, two weeks after starting at the fire department. They have two children, Hayden and Aliya.

Chief Shilling gave Williams and Tony their oaths of office in the ceremony. He said Williams’ “portion of the job is mainly just the safety and well-being of the public, so inspections of commercial buildings or class 1 structures within the city and territory. Fire prevention is within his realm as well, and he also will do our investigations for the fire territory.”

Asked what made Williams a good candidate for the job, Chief Shilling listed Williams’ experience over the past 18 years with the department.

“We had a good list of candidates that applied for the position, and Fire Marshal Williams just deserved the promotion and did really well in his process to get that position,” Chief Shilling said.

On the process to promote Tony to lieutenant, Chief Shilling said it started about a year ago with all the other promotions that have taken place since then.

“Obviously, we’ve had a lot of these promotion ceremonies. So there was a list comprised of potential candidates. With the retirement of Fire Marshal Fretz, the retirement of other fire department members, the leaving of some members, we had created that list and Lt. Shilling has successfully passed all the testing processes that were put forth well before I was even here. He deserved it, as well as all the other candidates who put in for it,” Chief Shilling explained.

While he’s very proud of his brother, Chief Shilling said Tony earned his promotion, as did all the other guys who were on the promotion list, which is now exhausted.

“For all future promotions, we’ll have to redo the captain/lieutenant list, so we’ll be in the process of doing that as well,” he stated.

At this time, with the four new hires that started last week, WWFT has one vacancy in the firefighter position.

The hires are going through a three-week firefighter academy.

Explaining the lieutenant promotion process, Chief Shilling said, “On the lieutenant process, it was a oral interview, comprised with our peers. A written test. We had to submit our certifications, and then a tactical assessment. And all those scorings basically composed where we ranked in the list. So the certifications were worth a certain percent, oral interview was worth a certain percent and the test was worth a certain percentage. That’s how we got ranked from one to the end of the list.”