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Firefighter’s Colleagues Recall a Memorable Man

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday April 15, 2008
Richard Brenneman
            Firefighters gathered from across Northern California to honor Jay Randall Walter, a Berkeley firefighter who died April 6 from cancer. Hundreds marched from Station 5 to St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church.
Richard Brenneman
Richard Brenneman Firefighters gathered from across Northern California to honor Jay Randall Walter, a Berkeley firefighter who died April 6 from cancer. Hundreds marched from Station 5 to St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church.
The California Professional Fire Fighters Pipe and Drum Corps followed the Color Guard at the head of the procession down Shattuck Avenue that honored Berkeley firefighter Jay Randall Walter, who died of pancreatic cancer April 6.
Richard Brenneman
The California Professional Fire Fighters Pipe and Drum Corps followed the Color Guard at the head of the procession down Shattuck Avenue that honored Berkeley firefighter Jay Randall Walter, who died of pancreatic cancer April 6.
The horse-drawn wagon bearing the body of firefighter Jay Randall Walter rolls past the Berkeley Public Library during the procession that began at Station 5 and ended at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church.
Richard Brenneman
The horse-drawn wagon bearing the body of firefighter Jay Randall Walter rolls past the Berkeley Public Library during the procession that began at Station 5 and ended at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church.

While laughter at a funeral might seem incongruous, then so was Jay Walter. Speaker after speaker described a man both outrageously public and exceedingly private. 

The Berkeley firefighter and paramedic remembered in an extraordinary gathering at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church was recalled as a sharp but gentle wit who could walk up to strangers and utter outrageous remarks. 

Yet he was also a man so private that even his closest friends knew almost nothing about his childhood, nor that he had won one of the nation’s highest military honors for gallantry in combat, the Silver Star. 

Firefighters from Fresno to Santa Rosa converged on Berkeley Saturday morning, marching through the city’s streets, accompanied by a pipe-and-drum team and a gleaming enameled wagon, drawn by a pair of magnificently groomed horses, which carried the flag-draped coffin. 

And as the procession neared the church, they passed beneath an arch, formed by two extended ladders from fire trucks, from which hung a massive U.S. flag. 

Walter died April 6 of pancreatic cancer, a death presumed by law to have been caused by chemical exposures incurred during his work. He had served with the Berkeley Fire Department for 15 years. 

“He was very private,” said Berkeley Fire Department Chaplain Ron Falstad, his voice breaking. 

All his close friends knew about Walter’s years before he became a firefighter was that he had been born in Westwood in 1953, and had gone to live with an uncle after his parents died when he was still a child. 

They knew he had joined the army’s Special Forces while still a teenager, and had been honorably discharged in 1974 with a Purple Heart. 

“That was all we knew until this morning,” Falstad said, when they discovered the Silver Star in his medals box. 

Walter served in the 5th Special Forces Group, the most highly decorated American unit in the Vietnam War, and Falstad said he wondered whether Walter’s reticence about his own history stemmed from the childhood trauma of losing both parents, or from things seen during his years at war. 

Falstad said Walter consistently declined opportunities for promotion and only in 2001 did he accept a step up to apparatus operator. 

While he was shy about his past, he was anything but in public. Falstad recalled times when he had variously introduced himself to unsuspecting members of the public as a ballerina, a pea farmer, a hair stylist, a private investor and a professor of law. 

Friends never quite knew when he was kidding, as when he claimed proficiency in sundry languages. So Falstad was intrigued when during a fire at Bayer’s West Berkeley headquarters a senior Bayer official muttered something that sounded like a “a very unfriendly German expression” after muttering in English about possible losses of a million dollars a day from any ensuing shutdown until the facility passed the fire inspector’s muster. 

At that point Walter stepped up and launched into a rebuttal in fluent German. 

The assembled mourners burst into laughter at the reminiscence. 

Berkeley Fire Chief Debra Pryor said her first impression on meeting Jay Walter was “Who is this guy?” And to say that Walter had a sense of humor, she said, was an understatement. 

Walter was a firefighter who often called those he had treated as a paramedic, Chief Pryor recalled. 

Dave Sprague, a colleague who also serves as president of the Berkeley Fire Fighters Association, drew laughs when he described Walter as “one of those guys who was an expert on any subject, even if he knew nothing about it,” and a master of impressions as well. 

Lt. George Fisher, a retired firefighter who had overseen Walter, drew more laughs when he said, “It was just when I wasn’t paying attention that he sometimes went astray.” 

“There were a thousand Jay stories,” Fisher said. 

After Berkeley firefighters responded to an alarm at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall law school, they found a gathering of lawyers, judges and appellate court justices had been evacuated from a meeting in progress. 

After the alarm was cleared, Walter walked into the lecture hall and called the meeting to order. 

“Then he commenced to give a speech laced with legal lingo ... the theme was that every person deserves a second chance,” Fisher said. “When it was over, they all stood up and cheered.” 

Beneath the outrageous exterior, colleagues recalled, was a firefighter dedicated to his craft. 

As a Special Forces Pathfinder, Walter had first trained as a medic, following up on his return to civilian life with paramedic training at UCLA’s Los Angeles Medical Center. 

He met his future mate Gerri Schmutz when he became her first paramedic partner in 1978, and they married four years later. 

In 1985, the couple moved to Morgan Hill, where they both volunteered for service with the fire department, which he joined full time three years later. He was hired by the Berkeley department in 1993, working as a paramedic until his promotion to apparatus operator in 2001. He served on a wide range of special teams, and worked with rescue dogs. 

Walter is survived by his spouse, a daughter, Roslyn, and a granddaughter, Addison. 

And as a packed house at a Berkeley church demonstrated Saturday, he will be sorely missed. 

When the services at the church ended, signaled by the ceremonial tolling of the last alarm—where three colleagues each rang a silver bell three times—and a final prayer, the firefighters headed to Brennan’s Irish Pub for another tradition, the wake. 

While Berkeley’s firefighters honored their fallen colleague, the city was still well protected, Mayor Tom Bates said before the procession began. Firefighters from neighboring cities, including retired brass, were staffing Berkeley’s fire stations until after the ceremonies. 

Among those present for the procession were the mayor, Assemblymember Loni Hancock and City Councilmembers Max Anderson and Darryl Moore.  

And not even the solemnity of the moment could stop the business of politics. Shortly before the march through Berkeley’s streets began, a Berkeley police sergeant walked up to Hancock to ask, “You’ll be coming to us soon for an endorsement?”