Excerpts from Chicago.cbslocal.com:
Mayor Lori Lightfoot has tapped Acting Chicago Fire Commissioner Annette Nance Holt, who lost her teenage son to one of the city’s most infamous shootings in 2007, to serve as the first Black woman to run the Chicago Fire Department.
Lightfoot announced Nance Holt’s nomination at a graduation ceremony for the latest class of Chicago Fire Department paramedics on Friday where Holt urged the class of 42 new paramedics to treat the patients they serve as members of their own families.
Nance Holt is the mother of Blair Holt, a 16-year-old Julian High School honor student who was shot and killed in 2007, as he was trying to shield a classmate from gunfire on a CTA bus. She and Blair’s father, retired Chicago Police Cmdr. Ronald Holt, have become outspoken advocates for victims of gun violence ever since.
A product of the Chicago Public Schools and a graduate of Chicago State University, Nance Holt has been a firefighter since 1990, four years after the first women were hired at Chicago Fire Department. She has served in virtually every role at the department, except for engineer.
In 2018, Nance Holt became the first woman and first Black woman to serve as First Deputy Commissioner. Lightfoot tapped her as Acting Fire Commissioner in early April, after Commissioner Richard Ford II retired when he reached the department’s mandatory retirement age.
