After high school, Randy Jenkins tried his hand at factory work, but it didn’t take, partly because he never really wanted a factory job after he heard his parents, both employees of a factory, fuss about it as he grew up.
Still, he needed a job. He was getting married soon.
So, at age 19, on May 30, 1974, Jenkins started at the Henderson Fire Department.
He’s not left since.
Jenkins, now a captain, celebrated his 50th work anniversary with HFD last week.
According to both Jenkins and HFD Chief Josh Dixon, there’s no one that they know of with more continuous working years at a fire department in the state. Jenkins mentioned a fire department employee in Louisville who had worked as a firefighter until his 20-year retirement date and returned a year later to work on the administrative side to reach 50-plus years.
But Jenkins doesn’t have a desk job, which is how he likes it. At 69, he’s still going out on runs and leading a crew.
“I’m usually the first one in the door,” he said.
Although there are exceptions. Jenkins, supervisor of Station 4, said if he’s on a run with an experienced firefighter, he might follow that firefighter in. If the other is inexperienced, Jenkins leads.
“Either way I’m still going in,” he said. “My motto has been first in the door, last one out.”
He’s been on thousands of runs, tens of thousands maybe when coupled with his other ambulance service job where he worked for 34 years on his off days from the fire department.
Jenkins reckons he’s helped lots of people in all those runs. He’s also seen a lot, some of it hard to see.
“You see a lot of things you can’t forget,” he said. The worst is when bad things happen to children, he said.
It all adds up.
“My generation was like you just suck it up,” he said. He said in recent years he’s seen more help, including counseling, for first responders dealing with trauma.
Jenkins said he’s been involved in some big fires in his years, but none were bigger than the Atlas Tack warehouse fire in 1978. He was off-duty and at his parents’ house on O’Byrne Street when he became aware something was going on nearby.
He called in to the fire department and was told of the fire. Jenkins drove over toward it and when a fire truck came by, he jumped on.
At one point in the fire, he said he was arguing with an older lieutenant who wanted to go inside. Jenkins was arguing to back away. Luckily, Jenkins won the argument, because seconds later a three-story wall fell where they’d been.
According to a June 17, 1978, Gleaner article about the blaze, “fireman Lt. Randy Jenkins got a hot ash in his eye and, as he turned to run from the falling structure, some bricks struck him on the back.”
It was one of the biggest fires, if not the biggest, in Henderson history, aided by gusting winds and a warehouse full of flammable materials, such as glue and oil, said the article. And it could have been worse.
“We thought we were going to lose the whole East End,” Jenkins said.
Other notable incidents Jenkins has worked on read like a who’s who of fires in Henderson the past half-century. He worked the 1988 Ellis Grain Co. granary explosion on Fifth Street, the 1998 Period Inc. fire on O’Byrne Street and the Weaverton Apartment complex (the old Weaverton School) fire in 2019.
As to when he plans to retire, he said, “I don’t have a clue. I’ll tell you when I know.”
Much of that decision depends on his health. In his 50 years as a firefighter, Jenkins has endured 14 surgeries. Each time, he’s come back healed up and ready for more.
“I heal up pretty quick,” he said.
Two of those surgeries stand out, both for their seriousness. In 2010, his stomach got pushed up into his chest cavity. It took four to five months to recover from that surgery.
In 2020, he had surgery on a ruptured colon, which by the time he got to the hospital had become septic. He didn’t know that.
A doctor told him he needed surgery. He asked when it would be—tomorrow?
Right now, in the next 15 minutes, she said. Or you’ll die.
He asked if he could at least tell his wife goodbye. They found her in the car in the parking lot, and he was able to say his goodbye while being rolled into surgery.
Surgeons cut about a foot from his colon, and Jenkins called the days after the surgery some of the most miserable in his life.
But soon enough, he was back at work.
He said a lot of firefighters get their 20 years and retire and then go do something else. But not him.
“Why do something else when you like what you’re doing?” he said. “I just like what I’m doing.”