When smoke filled a crowded Milwaukee theater 89 years ago this month, Harvey Krause didn’t shout “fire.”
As head usher, the 18-year-old Krause knew he had a job to do. Calmly he directed all 1,000 cinemagoers onto the street, and the Milwaukee Fire Department commended him for his bravery.
“Discipline and quick thinking are often spoken about but rarely understood, because they are seldom put to an actual test,” Depression-era Fire Commissioner Joseph Stein said at the time.
That was 1930. In 2019, his grandson Sean Gelles realized his lifelong dream and became a Milwaukee firefighter. At the graduation ceremony Thursday, many of the 42 recruits received their badges from family members on the force — emcee Capt. Craig Rydell teasingly called them “legacy kids.”