By Pat Reavy
Deseret News
SALT LAKE CITY — Salt Lake Fire Capt. Martha Ellis will be promoted Thursday to the rank of division chief, becoming the first woman in the history of the Salt Lake City Fire Department to hold the position.
“I think it’s a huge honor. I definitely accept the position with a great deal of humility,” she said. Rather than calling her promotion an “accomplishment,” Ellis would like to think of her achievement as more of an opportunity.
“It’s an opportunity to show other young women, or even middle-aged women, that things they may not have thought were obtainable or achieved can be, with the right amount of hard work, support and dedication,” she said.
Ellis, who never really thought of becoming a firefighter in her younger years, speaks from personal experience.
After graduating from Colorado State University in the 1980s, Ellis tried opening a business but soon landed on hard times.
She said she felt like she’d had her “teeth kicked in.”
She landed in Salt Lake and found a job waiting tables while trying to reassess her life.
It was in Utah that Ellis met people involved in firefighting.
“All of a sudden, it was like this epiphany,” she said of the decision to start down her current career path. “It seemed like a natural fit.”
Ellis worked as an EMT and wildland provider before being hired by the Salt Lake County Fire Department and transferring in 1995 to the Salt Lake City Fire Department.
For the past 14 years, she has worked in several positions with the city, including her current assignment as fire marshal at the Salt Lake International Airport.
“It’s not me standing out there by myself, by any stretch of the imagination,” she said of the promotion. “If it’s an accomplishment, it’s the accomplishment of all the people who supported me to get here.”
Now, Ellis hopes she can set an example for others. “
The hardest thing for most people to do is visualize themselves in nontraditional roles,” she said. “That’s where I hope my influences are. In my mind’s eyes, it’s about the opportunity.”
Copyright 2009 The Deseret News Publishing Co.