Gregory Lamont Summers

It’s while driving somewhere down a curiously uncrowded Cantrell Road in Little Rock that Gregory Summers says, “If I’m stressed, I don’t know it.”

Then, the Little Rock Fire Department chief flashes a disarming smile and lets out a low chuckle.

Consider Summers, who officially became fire chief in May 2009, an equable person, even in a pressure-filled position such as his.

He’s a man who seemingly should be under a lot of strain — overseeing a $49 million department budget and directing 423 employees (415 who are firefighters) at 21 fire stations across Little Rock.

His department covers every square inch of the city and protects an estimated 197,992 citizens, along with tens of thousands of others who work in Little Rock or sleep in one of the city’s hotel rooms.

Plus, he’s a family man and embraces all that goes along with that job — being a husband to Jeanette, a father to three grown children and doting grandfather to four, including a grandson who’s just starting tee-ball.

But at this moment, driving his SUV downtown to his office at the department’s Central Fire Station, Summers, 56, is unhurried. He rides a little laidback in his seat but is always prepared in a relaxed sort of way. That’s just his nature.

“I look forward to coming to work every single day,” he says.

Why? Well, there are a couple of big reasons.

First, he loves the Fire Department, loves the men and women of it. He cares deeply about every one of the firefighters and employees under his charge. He wants them to be safe.

Each time a fire alarm goes off, he’s thinking of those men and women, speeding toward a known call that is an entirely unknown situation.

If there’s one thing for which he wants to be remembered, he says, it’s increasing the safety of those men and women who battle fires, respond to wrecks and are first-on-scene EMTs at violent and not-so-violent acts in Little Rock.

“I don’t want to be remembered as the first African-American fire chief. I want to be remembered for advancing the organization and leaving it better than where I found it.”

And this son of Pine Bluff considers Little Rock home, having moved to the city not long after joining the department in April 1983.

“I love this city,” says Summers, who attends Saint Mark Baptist Church. “This is one of the greatest cities not only in the state of Arkansas but in the South. I think it’s a hidden gem.”

This talk isn’t just polite politicking. Summers says he sometimes travels across the Arkansas River to North Little Rock to face the Little Rock skyline, just to “look back at the city and how magnificent it is.”

On this May morning, Summers is driving back toward that skyline from far west Little Rock, following a visit to a home where a resident had complained that a burn pile for a subdivision site being cleared was too close to her house, leaving ashes across her backyard.

He’d already visited the site earlier and gotten the crew to move the burn pile to the opposite end of the clearing.

This return trip is a courtesy call. Personal touches such as this one — the lady wasn’t home on this visit — are just part of the job of being a metropolitan fire chief.

Back in his SUV, the stereo is turned to KIPRFM, 92.3 (Power 92 Jams), though the radio is muted. The only electronic noise is the intermittent buzz of Summers’ cellphone and the steady siren tone of fire emergencies squealing from his radio.

He’s dressed in a white Fire Department polo, his name embroidered — G. Summers — in gold letters. “Little Rock Fire” is on the left side of the chest. The “Little Rock” is also golden but not “Fire.” It’s fire engine red and outlined in gold.

The embellishing says this one particular word is important. Fire is the “why” of Summers and the men and women he oversees.

CLIMBING THE LADDER

Growing up in Pine Bluff, Summers didn’t consider firefighting as a career. He was no little child dreaming of one day riding on the back of a fire engine, lights blazing, siren wailing, heading toward a monster of lashing flames and dark-as-night smoke.

Summers wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and work for Arkansas Power & Light Co. (now Entergy Arkansas).

When Summers graduated from Watson Chapel High School in 1978, he joined the U.S. Army, where he served three years in supply and acquisition, ending his tour in Germany.

Back in Arkansas, Summers worked at Central Moloney Inc. in Pine Bluff, manufacturing the components of transformers, for about six months before getting laid off.

Unemployed, he was preparing GI Bill paperwork for college when he learned the Little Rock Fire Department was testing for new firefighters. He took the test at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and was hired within a year.

“I didn’t really think about the fire service until I got out of the military,” says Summers, who later earned a bachelor’s degree in emergency management from Arkansas Tech University at Russellville. “I wanted to continue to serve in the capacity of giving back … and the fire service provided that opportunity. So, when that opportunity came about, I thought I’d take advantage of it.”

He was first posted at Fire Station No. 15 on Kanis Road in west Little Rock, an area that in the early 1980s was more rural than city.

His first fire was a house fire at 12th Street and Arthur Drive, a block west of South University Avenue. He easily recalls that series of events 33 years later.

“When we pulled out of the fire station on Kanis Road, you could see the black smoke,” Summers says. “Immediately the adrenaline is flowing. … I remember that fire. I remember wrestling with that hose, making sure that once I hooked it up to the hydrant that I walked the kinks out of it so we have good water flow. I remember getting to the scene and tapping my captain on the back and saying, ‘Let me get on the front of the hose line.’ I remember all of that.”

As a new hire, Summers commuted from Pine Bluff to the fire station in Little Rock for his 24-hour shift every third day so he could be close to his father, Huey Summers, who was sick at the time and died soon after.

But before passing, his father told him that he should live where he worked, so Summers moved to Little Rock, where his mother now lives after moving from Pine Bluff, too.

He soon transferred to another station in west Little Rock, Fire Station No. 20 on Oak Meadow Drive, but the pace there — especially for a “young guy [wanting] to be real active” — was a little slow.

During those early years, Summers also drove delivery for a local flower shop, learning the highways, streets and alleys of Little Rock along the way. Today, after 33 years of navigating the city, Summers says he can find his way out of any spot in the city.

He excelled at firefighting, and in 1988 joined the city’s fire marshal office, an experience that gave him “a whole new perspective” on the department and the nature of fires.

He made captain in 1999, battalion chief in 2005 and assistant chief in 2007, serving under Chief Rhoda Mae Kerr, who became the city’s first female fire chief in 2004.

Summers calls Kerr a “trailblazer,” and in talking with Summers about Kerr, it’s clear that Kerr was a mentor to him.

He says he told Kerr, “If I don’t agree with you, I’m going to tell you why I don’t agree with you, and I’m going to give you my opinion on what direction I think we should go.”

Once she made a decision, though, he supported her completely, he says, as she expected him to. It’s a management style Chief Summers employs today.

“I don’t want to surround myself with people who always agree with me. I’m a firm believer that if there are two people that always agree, one of them is not needed.”

In November 2008, Kerr announced she was leaving Little Rock to take the job as chief of the Austin Fire Department in Texas.

Summers was named interim chief of the Little Rock Fire Department, and 56 people, including himself, applied for the opening.

He was selected in May 2009 as only the 12th person to hold the department’s top job since 1885 and the first black Little Rock fire chief.

“I don’t want to be remembered as the first African-American fire chief,” he says. “I want to be remembered for advancing the organization and leaving it better than where I found it. I thought we were heading in the right direction when Chief Kerr left and I picked up the mantle from her.”

Little Rock City Manager Bruce Moore, who oversaw the chief-hiring process, says Summers “had been preparing for the opportunity his entire career … but probably what stands out the most was his love of the Little Rock Fire Department and the citizens of our city.”

“Greg has done an excellent job as fire chief … and most importantly he wants to ensure his firefighters have the best equipment with the latest technology to assist them as they protect our citizens,” Moore says.

A TOP-RATED CREW

Summers’ fellow firefighters agree: “He’s not a micromanager.”

Chief Fire Marshal Joe Gray, who joined the department in 1987, says it. Assistant Fire Chief Douglas Coney, a Little Rock firefighter since 1984, repeats it.

“I think he’s a very progressive chief,” Gray adds. “He lets each department head run their own division. He’ll step in when he needs to.”

Gray also describes Summers as gregarious, a people person, and “not only a boss, but he’s a good friend and listener, as well.”

Both men praise the progress — started by Kerr, Summers will add — the department has made under the chief.

With better equipment, new training techniques and more, the Little Rock Fire Department is “one of the best fire departments in the country as far as fire protection,” Coney says.

Outside opinion reinforces Coney’s words. In January, the Little Rock Fire Department reached the highest national insurance rating possible — 1, the highest in a 10-class system given by the Insurance Services Office based in New Jersey.

Out of more than 47,000 cities the Insurance Services Office evaluates, about 140 are classified 1.

The rating had been 2 since 2004. Summers says the 2011 passage of a 1 percent sales-tax increase has provided more firefighters, new fire engines and other equipment, and has funded construction of a fire station in west Little Rock — all steps that assisted with the new rating.

Mayor Mark Stodola says, “It says from the standpoint of response times, the quality of the equipment we have, we are top-notch. Our citizens are fundamentally, overall more protected and safer when there is a fire. It helps with the pocketbook, too.”

‘STILL HAVE A WAYS TO GO’

In his office on a recent morning, Summers reflects on his 33-year career.

The office, with big windows overlooking Chester Street and downtown Little Rock, is uncluttered. On a coffee table in his office, there’s a Bible, alongside a framed photograph of a granddaughter and a collection of model fire engines.

Summers sometimes stares out the window when considering questions, as if the answers lie in the pavement below.

He’s not thinking about retirement, he says. He won’t stay past his usefulness, but he won’t leave before accomplishing what he set out to do.

Some goals, like the Class 1 rating and the new fire station on Rahling Road, have come about. The department is working on others, such as accreditation from the Commission on Fire Accreditation International and a new station in southwest Little Rock.

Summers says he would like to “make sure that firefighters have at least two sets of gear” at some point — about a $2 million investment.

It all goes back to firefighter safety, a topic Summers often returns to.

“We’ve done a lot in the area of trying to make sure that our firefighters have the necessary tools to be safe,” Summers says. He looks out the window at the cityscape of the home he loves.

“We still have a ways to go.”