I first met Alan Brunacini in the 1980s, when he was teaching one day of a weeklong leadership program I was attending in Massachusetts. We had lunch together that day and like most of the thousands of people who knew him, I was charmed by the man and his stories, his humor and his insights.
Over the years, our paths crossed again many times, as presenters at conferences, while attending events, and once when I was privileged to be invited to participate in his annual Baggers meeting in Phoenix. Alan Brunacini gave so much to the fire service – his insistence on formal incident command systems, his focus on customer service and his mandate to “be nice,” his empowerment of those who worked with him.
But it was something that he said during that first meeting that affected me the most.