The helmet fit, and Mick Stowers wore it proudly for 36 years.
Battalion Chief Stowers hung up that helmet for the last time this spring, retiring as a Durango firefighter, but he didn’t hang it where nobody could ever see it.
In fact, if you’re so inclined, you can stroll over to the Animas Museum right now and check out several helmets that he used between 1977 and 2013. It’s all part of the fireman’s credo to give back to the community, he said.
“I’ve always had that strong feeling for preserving what we had,” Stowers said during a recent interview at the museum. “I think it’s really important that message does not get lost.”
Stowers isn’t one to seek the limelight. Other than hanging out with his family, he’d rather be fishing for steelhead in northern British Columbia than doing just about anything. He had to be coaxed into doing this story, requesting that his connection to the nonprofit museum be part of it.
His longtime buddy Robert McDaniel was museum director for 33 years, retiring in 2010. It was McDaniel’s idea to create an exhibit, “Controlling the Fire Fiend,” about the Durango Fire Department in 1994, the centennial of Durango’s paid force.
The exhibit has gone through several incarnations. The current one, put together by guest curator Susan Jones last summer to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Missionary Ridge Fire, is called “Forged By Flame.” It shows how fires have changed the natural landscape and downtown’s architectural landscape.
Stowers has not only donated helmets, but he’s squirreled away artifacts such as an 1893-94 ledger that the fire department was about to discard.
“It was something that was really important to me, for the preservation of it, No. 1,” Stowers says. “And, No. 2, just so everyone can see the history that’s involved with Durango and the Durango Fire Department.”
The 58-year-old has tight connections to this place, having been born and raised here and having helped many residents in times of need. He began his firefighting career while a 20-year-old Fort Lewis College student. His job at that point was pouring concrete.
Not everyone can deal with the anguish that sometimes comes from being a firefighter. What you see on calls can test your mettle.
Stowers’ first brush with gruesome reality came on his first call. Two FLC exchange students in Trans-Ams, each with a passenger, were drag racing north on Main Avenue when a semitrailer was pulling out from a Safeway where the high school parking lot is now. They’d reached an estimated 100 mph when both vehicles struck the truck.
Three of the four men were killed instantly. Stowers investigated one car in which the two bodies were shoved as far up under the dashboard as physically imaginable.
It was only the first of 36 years’ worth of sometimes difficult calls.
“You don’t develop a callous,” Stowers says. “Every single call had so much feeling and heart, and there’s a lot of satisfaction that comes with it, but there’s a lot of sorrow too.”
Little by little, he rose up the ranks, as his five helmets indicate.
His first, a light black one, is a hand-me-down made in the 1940s.
He was hired by then-Chief Skip Merry, one of many veteran firefighters he credits with getting him going in the right direction. He lists Frank Shry, Pat Kelley, Leon Weinmann, Frank Mackey, Dick Dezendorf, Jerry Peters and Mike Dunaway as a few of those mentors.
“It’s about serving the public,” Stowers says. “And that’s what to me was the most important part, was being here for the public. ... That was instilled in me right from the very beginning.”
Merry, who retired as chief in 1988, recalls that Stowers – he calls him “Mickey” – came on at a “make it or break it” time for the department.
“The new people like Mickey really had that intensity and were really ready and raring to go,” Merry says.
The red helmet, from Stowers’ days as captain, is cracked, the result of a falling rafter during a home fire. He was knocked to one knee, but not out.
The dangers of the job are obvious. But the two top killers of firemen are not fires – they are heart attacks and being struck on the highway.
The white helmet, the one he wore during his final 11 years, signified he was a battalion chief.
Every day in that role, he made sure to connect with those under his wing, just a quick check sometimes to make sure they were mentally prepared for whatever emergency came their way. He didn’t want to send them into a situation they weren’t ready to deal with.
Stowers, who was responsible for 18 full-timers and 86 volunteers, was devoted to that role, says Durango Fire & Rescue Authority Chief Dan Noonan. He was grounded by family – wife, Bridget, and sons Cooper, Rex and Finn – and kept a good balance in his life.
“When you’re a battalion chief, you’re really worried about the people,” Noonan says. “You’re kind of the parent, the designated adult to sit down and look after them.”
With his own children to hang out with, Stowers has plenty on his plate. The former longtime ski patroller and fly-fishing shop owner has never been one to sit for long.
“I’ve thought about it a lot, but I’m not sad” about leaving the firefighting business, Stowers says, “I really am not.”
After all, there’s a lot of steelhead trout out there somewhere, looking for a bite.
johnp@durangoherald.com. John Peel writes a weekly human-interest column.
