aGinger Adams Otis: 5 interview questions I wish I'd been asked about 'Firefight' — and the answers I'd try to give BY GINGER ADAMS OTIS
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
"Firefight: The Century-Long Battle to Integrate New York's Bravest" by Ginger Adams Otis is out now.
After 10 years of being a reporter, I knew all the mistakes that trip up first-time interviewees: They talk too long and too much. They try to cram in a million details, give the whole story at once and produce eye-glazing, comprehensive answers to even the simplest questions.
“I will never do that,” I vowed, as I prepared for my first round of media interviews at the start of the summer. I was hitting the circuit for “Firefight: The Century-Long Battle to Integrate New York’s Bravest,” published by Palgrave-Macmillan.
Oh, if only that had turned out to be true! Of course I made all the usual mistakes — and even invented some new ones, I think. I was unprepared for the nerves.
If I could do it all over again, I’d answer differently, or at least more succinctly. In my dream interview, these are the questions I am asked — and the awesome, informative but brief answers I would have given:
Question: You’re a journalist who has never been a firefighter. How do you know so much about life inside a firehouse and how did you get firefighters to share their stories and feelings with you, especially about a topic as sensitive as race?
It took more than 10 years of reporting to build up some basic trust among a lot of the firefighters I relied on for “Firefight.” I feel like most of them were confident I was not out to do a hatchet job on the FDNY. Many are not named, but they spoke to me on background and their experiences are folded into the story. I try to be fair in my reporting — but still, there are inevitably some times when what you report angers people. But when you’ve been around for as long as I have, you almost become like wallpaper — people just get used to seeing you, and they come to accept your presence as something normal. After so many years of covering this story, I’d heard pretty much every different viewpoint firefighters had to offer and I tried hard to include some element of all of them in “Firefight.”
"If I could do it all over again, I’d answer just about everything differently, or at least more succinctly," Otis writes of doing interviews for her book.
Which chapter was the hardest to write and why?
The first chapter, without a doubt. It took almost as long to write as the whole book, in that I kept rewriting it the whole time I was working on all the other chapters. That opening scene has a key confrontation between two main protagonists, FDNY Capt. Paul Washington, a member of the Vulcan Society and one of the black firefighters who led the charge to file a Title VII discrimination lawsuit against the FDNY, and Deputy Chief Paul Mannix, a white firefighter who opposed the Vulcans’ claims of disparate impact from the FDNY’s hiring exams.
It was a difficult scene to get right, because it really happened and I had to consider multiple viewpoints in retelling it, and I had to find multiple witnesses to it to verify the narratives of the two main characters. Every piece had to fit, or I would have undercut the authenticity of the whole anecdote. I was lucky to have many people who saw parts of or the entire incident and who were willing to talk to me about it. I wanted “Firefight” to open up in a strong way, and that face-off was almost like a metaphor for all the department’s struggles.
Many reviewers have said their favorite chapters are those about Wesley Williams, one of the first black FDNY firefighters and the founder of the Vulcan Society. How did you find all the historical information about him?
Wesley Williams was an amazing man, and he has an unbelievable story — and he left behind a wonderful legacy. I didn’t initially conceive of Williams as part of “Firefight” until I found his archives at the Schomburg Center in Harlem. Once I read his speeches and saw all his letters and grasped the scope of his incredible family history, I knew he had to be included in “Firefight” and his story had to be told in a really gripping way. I also found some of his relatives — fabulous storytellers, all of them — and a wonderful old recording of Williams, talking about his first days on the job. That’s how I knew what his firehouse, Engine 55, looked like, how the men treated him, the captain who walked out on him — and I was able to put it all in his words because of that tape and his family.
Wesley Williams was one of the first black FDNY firefighters and the founder of the Vulcan Society.
Throughout the book, I kept everything in real time, past and present, because to me, the story had to be told with the same urgency and passion that you find in firefighters — they love their job, and this drawn-out lawsuit about discrimination in the FDNY hiring process was a very sore topic for a long time, and it some ways it strained the fabric of the brotherhood. And yet, from that strain, great change has come. Williams, as the first black in Manhattan in 1919, created immense strain and tension in his Little Italy firehouse just by his very presence — and yet look at the FDNY now. No black firefighter today would ever have to suffer the discrimination he encountered.
Why didn’t you just write a straight biography of Williams and his family?
I definitely thought about it, especially when I found out that two other blacks had been in the FDNY before him, William Nicholson and John Woodson. They were both from Brooklyn, and their stories are also part of “Firefight.” I could have written about the tribulations of all three and it would have been a great book. But at the same time, to me … it’s always easier to write about the past, and I just didn’t want to take the easy way out. Williams is the founder of the Vulcan Society, and during the Bloomberg era, that same society took a beating in the court of public opinion because they dared challenge the traditional hiring methods of the FDNY — even though the department knew (and had known for decades) that its hiring practices wouldn’t withstand a discrimination lawsuit. It almost seemed like I would be undercutting the very legacy Williams created if I just focused on the past and ignored all the battles that blacks still face today when confronting institutional racism and discrimination.
What have you heard from people who don’t like “Firefight”?
Very little, actually! I am sure there are many who don’t like it, but I don’t think they are really reading it — they dislike the premise and don't give it a chance. Many within the Fire Department have read it and tell me they really like it. I worked hard to make it a strong, suspenseful and enjoyable story in its own right -- it moves fast, and it’s not a heavy, lecturing book. You don’t have to be a firefighter, or a history buff or even a New Yorker to like “Firefight.” It was written first and foremost to be a book people would enjoy, regardless of their politics or personal opinions.
gotis@nydailynews.com
After 10 years of being a reporter, I knew all the mistakes that trip up first-time interviewees: They talk too long and too much. They try to cram in a million details, give the whole story at once and produce eye-glazing, comprehensive answers to even the simplest questions.
“I will never do that,” I vowed, as I prepared for my first round of media interviews at the start of the summer. I was hitting the circuit for “Firefight: The Century-Long Battle to Integrate New York’s Bravest,” published by Palgrave-Macmillan.
Oh, if only that had turned out to be true! Of course I made all the usual mistakes — and even invented some new ones, I think. I was unprepared for the nerves.
If I could do it all over again, I’d answer differently, or at least more succinctly. In my dream interview, these are the questions I am asked — and the awesome, informative but brief answers I would have given:
Question: You’re a journalist who has never been a firefighter. How do you know so much about life inside a firehouse and how did you get firefighters to share their stories and feelings with you, especially about a topic as sensitive as race?
It took more than 10 years of reporting to build up some basic trust among a lot of the firefighters I relied on for “Firefight.” I feel like most of them were confident I was not out to do a hatchet job on the FDNY. Many are not named, but they spoke to me on background and their experiences are folded into the story. I try to be fair in my reporting — but still, there are inevitably some times when what you report angers people. But when you’ve been around for as long as I have, you almost become like wallpaper — people just get used to seeing you, and they come to accept your presence as something normal. After so many years of covering this story, I’d heard pretty much every different viewpoint firefighters had to offer and I tried hard to include some element of all of them in “Firefight.”
"If I could do it all over again, I’d answer just about everything differently, or at least more succinctly," Otis writes of doing interviews for her book.
Which chapter was the hardest to write and why?
The first chapter, without a doubt. It took almost as long to write as the whole book, in that I kept rewriting it the whole time I was working on all the other chapters. That opening scene has a key confrontation between two main protagonists, FDNY Capt. Paul Washington, a member of the Vulcan Society and one of the black firefighters who led the charge to file a Title VII discrimination lawsuit against the FDNY, and Deputy Chief Paul Mannix, a white firefighter who opposed the Vulcans’ claims of disparate impact from the FDNY’s hiring exams.
It was a difficult scene to get right, because it really happened and I had to consider multiple viewpoints in retelling it, and I had to find multiple witnesses to it to verify the narratives of the two main characters. Every piece had to fit, or I would have undercut the authenticity of the whole anecdote. I was lucky to have many people who saw parts of or the entire incident and who were willing to talk to me about it. I wanted “Firefight” to open up in a strong way, and that face-off was almost like a metaphor for all the department’s struggles.
Many reviewers have said their favorite chapters are those about Wesley Williams, one of the first black FDNY firefighters and the founder of the Vulcan Society. How did you find all the historical information about him?
Wesley Williams was an amazing man, and he has an unbelievable story — and he left behind a wonderful legacy. I didn’t initially conceive of Williams as part of “Firefight” until I found his archives at the Schomburg Center in Harlem. Once I read his speeches and saw all his letters and grasped the scope of his incredible family history, I knew he had to be included in “Firefight” and his story had to be told in a really gripping way. I also found some of his relatives — fabulous storytellers, all of them — and a wonderful old recording of Williams, talking about his first days on the job. That’s how I knew what his firehouse, Engine 55, looked like, how the men treated him, the captain who walked out on him — and I was able to put it all in his words because of that tape and his family.
Wesley Williams was one of the first black FDNY firefighters and the founder of the Vulcan Society.
Throughout the book, I kept everything in real time, past and present, because to me, the story had to be told with the same urgency and passion that you find in firefighters — they love their job, and this drawn-out lawsuit about discrimination in the FDNY hiring process was a very sore topic for a long time, and it some ways it strained the fabric of the brotherhood. And yet, from that strain, great change has come. Williams, as the first black in Manhattan in 1919, created immense strain and tension in his Little Italy firehouse just by his very presence — and yet look at the FDNY now. No black firefighter today would ever have to suffer the discrimination he encountered.
Why didn’t you just write a straight biography of Williams and his family?
I definitely thought about it, especially when I found out that two other blacks had been in the FDNY before him, William Nicholson and John Woodson. They were both from Brooklyn, and their stories are also part of “Firefight.” I could have written about the tribulations of all three and it would have been a great book. But at the same time, to me … it’s always easier to write about the past, and I just didn’t want to take the easy way out. Williams is the founder of the Vulcan Society, and during the Bloomberg era, that same society took a beating in the court of public opinion because they dared challenge the traditional hiring methods of the FDNY — even though the department knew (and had known for decades) that its hiring practices wouldn’t withstand a discrimination lawsuit. It almost seemed like I would be undercutting the very legacy Williams created if I just focused on the past and ignored all the battles that blacks still face today when confronting institutional racism and discrimination.
What have you heard from people who don’t like “Firefight”?
Very little, actually! I am sure there are many who don’t like it, but I don’t think they are really reading it — they dislike the premise and don't give it a chance. Many within the Fire Department have read it and tell me they really like it. I worked hard to make it a strong, suspenseful and enjoyable story in its own right -- it moves fast, and it’s not a heavy, lecturing book. You don’t have to be a firefighter, or a history buff or even a New Yorker to like “Firefight.” It was written first and foremost to be a book people would enjoy, regardless of their politics or personal opinions.
gotis@nydailynews.com