Excerpts from the rblandmark.com:
After a 30-year career in Westchester, James Adams will become the Brookfield fire chief on April 6, chosen from a field of seven final candidates, two of them internal. He replaces Fire Chief Mark Duffek, who retired in December after a 38-year career. Adams will be the first chief in Brookfield who was not promoted from within.
He got his start in the fire service as a paid-on-call firefighter in 1988 and was hired full-time in Westchester in 1990. He spent 18 years as a firefighter paramedic before being promoted to lieutenant in 2008, then to chief in 2011. He was involved in Westchester’s transition to a consolidated dispatch center, initiating electronic patient care reporting before it was required by the state, and strengthening health and safety policies at the village’s two fire stations. He also served as the fire department’s grant writer with about $800,000 in funding being awarded for everything from a heavy rescue to radios.
Adams has a bachelor’s degree from Western Illinois University. He also is a former varsity and sophomore level football coach at St. Joseph High School at Westchester, and for the past five years has kept official stats at home games for the Chicago Bears, a job he took over from his late father-in-law, George Strnad who did that job for 35 years.
