By Lessie Scurry
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Copyright 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA — East Point native Rosemary Roberts Cloud grew up with aspirations to become a lawyer, blazing a trail in the courtroom.
What she never expected was that one day, her job would be putting out fires and that her trailblazing would be in another area. When she took office almost five years ago, she was the first African-American woman to become chief of a fire department.
Her firefighting career began because of her memory of a fire.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in applied behavioral science from National-Louis University and certification in the Senior Executives in State and Local Government program at Harvard University, Cloud, the youngest of 14 children, took a job as a legal aid. Married by then, she never pursued the law degree.
About 27 years ago, contemplating what she might do with the rest of her life, careerwise, Cloud thought about seeing a major fire years before. She decided she wanted to be a part of the team that saved people and their buildings from fires.
“That training turned a regular, ordinary person into a firefighter,” she said. “I began to really appreciate what it takes to fight fires. . . . What we do, the average person would not be willing to do.”
Cloud now manages five fire stations in East Point with a total of 130 employees. Her stations are responsible for an area with about 40,000 residents.
That responsibility doesn’t seem to faze her. She was assistant chief of the Fire Department at Hartsfield International Airport when the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon occurred on Sept. 11, 2001.
“I had to process the fact that I could make a decision that could kill a lot of people,” she said. Her faith gave her strength to believe in herself, she said, because “day to day, we had to get the job done.”
As East Point fire chief, Cloud has started more than 20 public safety programs as a service to the community, including an annual health fair. She produced and presented numerous leadership and career development workshops and has received national recognition for her experience and training on promotional testing processes.
Newly elected East Point Mayor Joe Macon said that although Cloud is the city’s first female African-American fire chief, neither her race nor her sex played a role in her achievements. “For the previous administration, her history and accomplishments made her hands-down the best choice,” he said. “More than anything, it’s her ability and prowess that she brings, and her credibility. We just couldn’t buy that or get it anywhere else.”
When she isn’t on the job, Cloud likes to unwind by reading a book by James Patterson or Pearl Cleage, spending time with her granddaughter, going out to dinner and a movie, taking a long trip with friends (they once did the Electric Slide on a glacier), or just relaxing in front of the TV and watching reruns of “Andy Griffith,” “Girlfriends” or “The Parkers.”
Macon said the city would like to keep Cloud “indefinitely” as their fire chief.
Cloud, however, may decide to move on.
“I’d eventually like to do something on the federal level in homeland security,” she said.
Cloud’s professional affiliations include the Georgia Association of Fire Chiefs, the Women in Fire Service, Women Chief Fire Officers, the International Association of Black Professional Fire Fighters, the National Association of Black Public Administrators, and the National Fire Prevention Association. She was featured in Who’s Who in Black Atlanta and Black Enterprise Magazine and has received numerous awards from national organizations.