Retired Cabin John Park Volunteer Fire Department Chief James P. Seavey Sr. entered the inaugural VCOS Hall of Fame on Friday, Nov. 13. The Bethesda fire chief, who died in 2018, was inducted posthumously at the IAFC Volunteer and Combination Officers Section (VCOS) Annual Conference in Florida, according to a post on X. His son, Jim Seavey Jr., accepted the honor.
Seavey died Sept. 4, 2018, after years of battling non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a blood cancer, according to a memorial on the CJPVFD website. He was born in 1960.
He spent 42 years as a first responder in the greater D.C. area. He became CJPVFD fire chief on Jan. 1, 1992, and held the post until retiring Dec. 31, 2017. He started in the fire service as a 16-year-old Walt Whitman High School volunteer at Glen Echo Fire Department in 1976, rising to assistant chief there before moving to Cabin John.
Seavey also served as a career firefighter with the D.C. Fire and EMS Department for 30 years, reaching the rank of captain. For many years he was the officer of Engine 16, the unit dubbed the Midnight Express. That station has the White House as "first due," meaning its crew responds first to any call there.
At the time of his death, Seavey served as Maryland's representative on the board of the National Volunteer Fire Council. He had chaired the Maryland State Firemen's Association (MSFA) Executive Committee and served as president of the Eastern Division of Fire Chiefs, a division of the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC).
He co-authored the Lavender Ribbon Report, a set of best practices for preventing firefighter cancer published by the IAFC. In 2009, the IAFC named him Volunteer Fire Chief of the Year. He also received the Leslie B. Thompson Award for Lifetime Achievement, the highest honor from the Maryland Fire Chiefs Association.
Ana Soule, a CJPVFD member from 2003 to 2008, recalled joining the department at 16. "Chief Jim Seavey was a big part of that," she wrote in a tribute on the department's website. "He had an almost rock-star status among us probies, and he made us WANT to achieve."
