Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com:
On Saturday friends, family, and colleagues will meet in Waukegan’s Shiloh Baptist Church to honor Mark Alan Miller, North Chicago’s first full-time black firefighter, who died Saturday at age 72.
Doors are scheduled to open at 10 a.m. at the church, 800 S. Genesee St., followed by an 11 a.m. funeral service.
Miller graduated from North Chicago High School in 1963 and served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam from November 1965 to October 1967. In the 1970s, he decided he wanted to be a firefighter.
“His father was city clerk and they had to sue the city because the firefighters test was racially biased,” his wife said, adding that after it was fixed, he passed it and joined the department.
When he started, she said, there was sometimes conflict with white people as he would start to give them first aid.
He was president of the firefighters union for a year before he suffered an aortic aneurysm on the job at the end of 2001 and retired the following year.
North Chicago Fire Chief Dell Urban said that Miller never talked about any problems in the firehouse he may have had when joining the department on Oct. 1, 1975.
Miller received a number of certificates and licenses during his years on the force, including Firefighter I and II designations, medical technician, and then paramedic, and he was a hazardous materials technician. He assisted on several major fires over the years, including a fire at the North Chicago Wire Mill in the early 1980s and an explosion at the Traco Inc. chemical plant in June 1988.
He also received special commendations during his career, including one for rescuing two children from a house fire in 1995, Urban said.
