David Lenart is comfortable around blood, fires and reporters.
“I’ve been around them all my life. I grew up around it,” said Lenart, the 33-year-old newly elected chief of the Derby Storm Ambulance and Rescue Corps on Olivia Street.
Lenart became chief Jan. 5.
He is a third generation chief. His father, Thomas Lenart, Sr. was a past chief, as was his grandfather, Edward J. Cotter, Jr.
Lenart’s family tree forms the roots of Storm Ambulance.
Cotter was a founding member of the organization — and a legendary photojournalist for the old Evening Sentinel. He died Jan. 21 at the age of 91.
Lenart idolized his grandfather, who was known to respond to emergency calls if need be with his grandkids in tow.
During a recent interview with Lenart at the Storm Ambulance headquarters, Cotter’s old Sentinel camera was in the chief’s office — along with a old horn Cotter used to advise volunteers they were needed to respond to a call.
When Cotter passed, co-workers fondly recalled him as someone who wasn’t afraid to bust chops.
Lenart inherited that gene.
Within 30 seconds of a reporter’s arrival at the Storms building, Lenart was busting chops at a rapid rate.
“You’re a reporter. Do you tend to know things just by just having a sense? If I show you something, can you just sense something is wrong? Can I test your Spidey sense?” he asked.
Next he’s cracking jokes about a volunteer who just walked in on crutches. Then he’s kidding about how he was put up as a last-minute candidate for the Derby Board of Aldermen. Now he’s kidding about Mayor Anthony Staffieri’s age. Finally it’s about his older brother Tom’s “cushy” job as a firefighter in Greenwich.
The guy laughs easily, making the Storms building feel more like home than an ambulance corps.
He moves the interview from the chief’s office to an adjoining room where a few of the members are sitting.
“We don’t really use this room,” he said of the chief’s office.
What are his duties as chief?
“Hang out at a water cooler, talk to the mayor and write memos,” he said, kidding.
Lenart is informal, but don’t let that fool you.
He’s already accumulated a boatload of experience in emergency services.
It began by watching his father and grandfather at fires or EMS calls.
There was never any doubt that Lenart would go into the “family business.”
Born and raised in Derby, when he turned 16, his obsession wasn’t with getting a driver’s license — it was getting his EMT certification.
He graduated from Derby High School in 1996 and already had a few years experience under his belt.
“My first job after graduating from high school was as a firefighter at a Naval base in Massachusetts,” Lenart said. “At 18, I had the qualifications for the job.”
The Naval base shut down after about a year, Lenart said.
“One day some planes took off and and never came back. That was the end of that job,” he joked.
He returned to the Valley and took a job as an ambulance dispatcher in Seymour, the first of a few emergency dispatch jobs. The whole time he was involved in Derby emergency services.
He was hired as a firefighter in Bridgeport in 2007, the same year he was elected to represent the Second Ward on the Derby Board of Aldermen.
He was asked to be a candidate by the local Republican Party at the last minute “due to an issue with the guy they were supposed to run,” Lenart said.
“They asked me to run and I said ‘Sure, why not?’” he said.
He won, which surprised him. He wasn’t sure if he’d enjoy his new role as an elected official.
Yet once in office, Lenart enjoyed some of the technical aspects of being a local Alderman, such as trying to craft local ordinances.
“It was actually a lot of fun. I thoroughly enjoyed myself,” he said.
However, keep in mind Lenart’s time at the big table during Derby Aldermen meetings was the closest he’d ever come to a desk job.
Lenart served on the Board of Aldermen until he was unseated in November 2011.
“The pure bureaucracy of government, what it takes to get simple things done, that was a little frustrating,” Lenart said. “In our line of work, there is less red tape.”
Will Lenart ever run for public office again?
“I’m sure I’ll run for mayor at some point,” he said, straight-faced.
Seriously?
“Nah,” he said, then letting out a big laugh, happy he’d fooled a reporter.
“I joke about that all the time, but the end of my political career has already happened,” Lenart said. “Only Jordan and Jay Z can come out of retirement.”
In 2008, Lenart married his long-time sweetheart, Cady. The two started dating in 1998 after meeting at an EMT class in Seymour, where Cady grew up. The couple recently purchased a house on Coppola Terrace, not far from Lenart’s childhood home.
“I cannot leave the Second Ward,” he joked.
As the new chief, Lenart isn’t planning any radical changes to the Derby Storm Ambulance and Rescue Corps.
Membership retention is at the top of Lenart’s to-do list as chief.
Storm has about 45 members. It’s a bit of a revolving door, because young people volunteer, get experience and then move onto careers as firefighters or EMS workers.
“It’s really a training ground. Long-term retention is very difficult these days,” he said.
Many or the corps’ active members are guys like Lenart: legacies. About a dozen members have fathers who are also members.
They’re the group that carries on tradition.
“It’s all very local,” he said.
Last year the Storms responded to about 2,600 calls for service. It’s been on an upswing for several years.
“Derby has a large elderly population and people are getting older, so there are more calls every year,” Lenart said.
The annual budget is about $450,000. Lenart does not receive payment for his service as chief.
