Bill Newgent a leader in city, county and beyond

Monday, January 23, 2023
On the occasion of his retirement in 2016, former Greencaatle Fire Chief Bill Newgent chats with other area chiefs. Newgent passd away unexpectedly on Friday at age 54.
Banner Graphic/ERIC BERNSEE

What’s the most important quality in a leader?

Command of the room is important, provided it’s balanced with approachability.

Grace under pressure also matters — particularly for a fire chief.

There’s also the ability to build relationships, both inside and outside the organization.

For former Greencastle Fire Chief Bill Newgent, who died unexpectedly on Friday at age 54, the most important quality seems to have been a constant desire to grow, and to help others grow along with him. (Read Newgent’s obituary here.)

For colleagues who knew him best, that continued growth was a big thing that set Newgent apart, not just in Greencastle or Putnam County, but around the state and even the country.

It’s one major factor former three-term Greencastle Mayor Nancy Michael saw in Newgent when she appointed him chief while he was still in his early 30s, relatively young for a fire chief.

“He was a kid,” Michael recalled with a laugh. “We used to have an ongoing joke, I’d say, ‘Now, Bill, how old were you when I appointed you?’”

However, Michael was effusive in her praise of Newgent, saying if you were to Google the qualities of a firefighter, “that was Bill,” particularly noting his desire to improve and help others do the same.

“Unquestionably, he led by example,” Michael said. “For Bill, there was never status quo. And it was never about Bill, the way he treated his leadership. It was about the department and believing in the men and women that he had, and he was so focused on training and education — he wanted to do more.”

Michael noted that it went beyond the department as well.

“He did a phenomenal job of building relationships across the county with the other fire departments,” Michael said. “He really embraced them. He believed in them having the same opportunities as well.”

That opinion was shared outside the city as well, as noted by longtime Roachdale Fire Chief Mike Poole.

“Bill was more than just the Greencastle fire chief,” Poole said. “He cared for all the fire departments in the county.”

Poole recalls when all fire departments had to convert to 800 megahertz radios, a pricey undertaking for any department. When it came time to find funding for the new radios, Newgent secured a grant for the entire county, not just GFD.

“But that was just Bill,” Poole noted. “He was also the one who set up the Putnam County Fire Chiefs Association. We started having regular, quarterly meetings with all the chiefs in the county, and he was the one that got that started.

“He pretty much involved all the departments in any major things that went on,” he added. “That was just I always admired about him.”

Newgent’s ability to build connections soon grew beyond the county.

Indiana Fire Chiefs Association Executive Director Dale Henson first got to know Newgent when both men were still active fire chiefs, Henson at Decatur Township in Marion County and Newgent at Greencastle.

Both were soon also serving on the board of directors of IFCA.

“Bill was a great leader. People loved to work for him,” Henson said. “I know the people that worked for him at Greencastle liked the guy, loved the guy ... for the most part. As fire chiefs, not everybody loves us.

“He was a proven leader and became president of the Indiana Fire Chiefs in 2006-07.”

The leadership was not simply on the administrative side, though, as Henson noted that Newgent led the District 7 team that deployed to both the Henryville tornado and to Hurricane Sandy, both in 2012.

In each case, Newgent was not simply a cog in the wheel, but an incident commander beyond the District 7 team.

“I did not personally go to Henryville or to Hurricane Sandy, but people from my fire department did,” Henson said, “and they spoke highly of Bill’s command and how he treated people. I think that’s important, and our biggest assets as fire chiefs was the people who worked for us.”

Henson also recalled Newgent’s involvement with kicking off the state’s regional training concept, as well as the Fire Service Safe initiative, which aimed to improve firefighter training throughout the state.

For these efforts and other accomplishments, Newgent earned a Sagamore of the Wabash in 2008 and the IFCA combination/volunteer Fire Chief of the Year in 2009.

“I actually presented Bill his Fire Chief of the Year award because he wasn’t at the banquet the night he was announced,” Henson said. “I received the career Fire Chief of the Year the same year Bill did.”

While the honors were nice, building a better department mattered most to Newgent, and he strove to improve fire service in Greencastle just as much as he did statewide.

Retired Greencastle firefighter Jeff Elkins noted that Newgent brought new positions to the department that modernized it — engineers, safety officer, fire inspector.

“He really elevated our department. He brought us to a different level with the training,” Elkins said. “I’m not bad-mouthing any chief before, but he brought us to new heights.”

Retired firefighter Jeff Mace, who was assistant chief for the majority of Newgent’s tenure at the helm, concurred.

“We really brought training up to a whole new level,” Mace said. “We really went outside the box during his tenure as chief.”

Mace also noted the way Newgent built connections and got Greencastle Fire Department plugged in to departments and opportunities in places like Indianapolis and Terre Haute.

“Bill went out and we became Greencastle Fire, and everybody knew,” Mace said. “He helped get us involved in District 7. Greencastle Fire, along with Terre Haute and Honey Creek, really were the lead agencies on getting District 7 established, along with the State Fire Marshal’s Office.

Despite the involvement of the much larger Terre Haute area, Greencastle even became the home of the District 7 command vehicle, making it a leader in the eight-county area that also includes Vermillion, Parke, Vigo, Clay, Owen, Sullivan and Greene counties.

“He got us out of our boundaries from just being by ourselves,” Mace said. “We got involved in the Fire Chiefs Association. We were the hazmat guys for District 7, along with Terre Haute. We had the command vehicle here.”

“He got us heavily involved with District 7,” Elkins agreed. “For a small department, it was huge that we housed the command vehicle.”

In making connections, Newgent also created opportunities for his firefighters, like bringing Elkins aboard to plan the annual Greencastle Fire Department golf outing to raise money for the Hoosier Burn Camp, for which Newgent was longtime vice president.

“That gave me a lot of opportunities to go to different other outings and meet a lot of fire chiefs,” Elkins said. “I went to the fire chiefs conference several times with him, presenting checks. Even other chiefs from other departments were coming down and taking Bill and I to lunch to explain to them how we were raising so much money.”

The outing gave rise to Elkins and Newgent becoming golfing buddies, and some funny story about the chief.

“He was a terrible golfer,” Elkins recalled. “I got him to even join Windy Hill, which was amazing — he couldn’t hit out of his shadow half the time.”

Then one day, Newgent played the nine of his life. Newgent was leading approaching the last green, but Elkins, who says he never lost to the chief before or since, thought he could still pull it out.

“And he chips it in,” Elkins recalls with a laugh.“He acted like he won the Masters. He kept that scorecard ... he still has the scorecard.”

This despite Elkins assuring him, “Bill, I’m not that good. It’s not an accomplishment to beat me.”

In fact, Newgent kept the scorecard up in his office at GFD until he retired, up among his more widely-recognized accomplishments.

“He had the Sagamore, the Fire Chief of the Year in the state and beating Jeff Elkins in golf, all on the same wall,” Elkins said.

Even since Newgent retired and went on to his second career as the owner of JTN Services and JTN Outdoor Power, Newgent kept the scorecard nearby.

“Just recently we talked about it, and I said, ‘Do you still have that?’ He said, ‘Yep, it’s still hanging in my office.’ He said, ‘I show everybody.’ I said, ‘You’re more proud of that than the Sagamore, aren’t you?’ He said, ‘Yep.’”

That sense of humor underscores the approachability most people found in Newgent, even as he was in command of some of the most serious situations imaginable.

Newgent’s command coupled with his friendliness is what current GFD Chief John Burgess recalled about Newgent.

“Bill had a commanding way in his speech,” Burgess said. “He was just a friendly person. It didn’t matter what kind of day you were having, whether it was good or bad, Bill was always someone you could talk to. He would sit there and listen to you.”

It was a relationship that began when Burgess and Newgent were both volunteers at Madison Township, continued when Burgess followed Newgent to GFD, as well as when Burgess succeeded Mace as assistant chief near the end of Newgent’s tenure.

Since Newgent’s retirement in early 2016, Burgess knew his door remained open.

“Once he retired and I took over, his door was always open if I had any questions,” Burgess said. “He was a great mentor to me.”

As a fellow chief, Henson also found a sympathetic ear in Newgent.

“When I was fire chief and he was fire chief, we would always talk about things that were going on in our department — discipline and those kinds of things,” Henson said. “I believe in what Bill stood for and how he ran his fire department — I would call him a friend. I can’t say enough about him as a colleague but also as a friend, and that’s probably more to me than the colleague part.”

Standing at the corner of Indiana and Washington streets, former Greencastle Fire Chief Bill Newgent oversees the operations of 16 departments and more than 100 personnel as they battle a fire that affected more than half of a block of Washington Street on May 17, 2013.
Banner Graphic/JARED JERNAGAN

Of course, part of Newgent’s legacy lies in how GFD handled major incidents under his leadership. These included the Rector Hall fire at DePauw in 2002 and the downtown fire in 2013.

Neither of these, fortunately, featured any loss of life. However, Michael remembers the day that GFD almost lost one of its own. That was at a grain elevator fire north of town.

“I’ll never forget, we almost lost a firefighter in there,” Michael said. “I’ll never forget, he was just hanging on. Bill, in those situations, could stay calm and make decisive decisions. He was on point and collected and was there for the overall good and always making sure his men were safe. That’s why he always focused on training so much because he didn’t want to lose a firefighter ever.”

When it comes right down to it, Michael said she chose Newgent as fire chief because he was the best man for the job.

“I said, I don’t know how to be a firefighter, but what I’ve got to do is have the best guy in that seat so he can help me know what it is that needs to be done in the fire service,” Michael said. “And he was great at that. He was really good at making sure you got what you needed to understand and make a decision.

“It was great having Bill at the helm,” she added. “He was good at what he did — the best of the best. Gone too soon for sure.”

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  • He was a very good man and really cared about the fire department and other issues. He will be missed.

    -- Posted by Queen53 on Mon, Jan 23, 2023, at 10:17 PM
  • Bill Newgent helped me in numerous ways as a firefighter and line officer - but the thing I remember the most about him was his friendship and prayer. Once when our department was going through a real tough time, Bill met up with me to pray about it...that's so Bill. Instead of telling me what to do, he told me to trust in the Lord because I was where He wanted me...I will forever love him for that.

    -- Posted by infiremanemt on Tue, Jan 24, 2023, at 8:48 AM
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