Dedicated Firefighter Taking On New Challenge Slightly West Of Enfield

ENFIELD, CT — After a stellar 36-year career serving the residents of Enfield as a pillar of the town's fire departments, Scott Ellis is officially retiring from the town this month. However, he is not leaving the fire service, but instead is taking on a new challenge as chief of a department on the second-largest island in the United States, a mere 4,938 miles from where he has always made his home.

Ellis, fire marshal in Thompsonville for the past three years, has been hired as the new chief at the Bayside Volunteer Fire Department on Kodiak Island in Alaska. At 3,595 square miles, Kodiak trails only Hawaii (4,028 sq. mi.) among American islands. It is home to the largest U.S. Coast Guard base, and boasts a climate that is not nearly as frigid as one normally associates with the 49th state. The average daily high temperature ranges from 61 degrees in August to 35 in January, with average monthly lows from 24 (February) to 49 (August).

His official retirement date is July 31, but using accrued paid time off, his last day on the job will be this Friday. Next Tuesday, he and his wife Trish's uncle Bob will load up their vehicle, including the couple's two border collies, and begin the cross-country trek. Actually, they will cross two countries.

"Bob is retired so he's going to be my sidekick," Ellis said in an exclusive interview with Patch Monday. "He offered to take the ride and I appreciate the heck out of that, because I was a little nervous. It's not only cross country, it's cross continent. I'll be traveling through the Midwest into Illinois, across two Canadian provinces (Saskatchewan and Alberta) to get to British Columbia, then up into the Yukon Territory, then across into Alaska. We'll go down through Anchorage to Homer and then I pick up the car ferry from Homer in the early morning hours of July 19 to Kodiak."

His wife will soon be joining him out west, and he and his family will reside in an apartment attached to the Bayside fire station. Two of their seven children will also be making the move: Gage, a college art major, and Kyle, a special needs student who will finish up a transition program he started two years ago at the former Alcorn School in Enfield.

"He'll finish that up in Kodiak and then they have a program after that which Enfield doesn't have, where he will receive mentoring, career guidance and life guidance for two more years," Ellis said.

He had been offered the chief's job at Bayside two years ago, but had to decline due to family reasons. When the new chief left due to personal reasons after a short tenure, Ellis was contacted again, and this time was able to accept the offer.

"I was honored to be offered the position, but unfortunately due to our family dynamics at the time - we have seven kids, two were still in high school plus Kyle - we would have had to maintain two households for two years and that just wasn't viable," he said. "I was very pleased to be contacted kind of out of the blue and asked if I was still interested and if things had changed, and yes I was very interested and yes things had changed. I subsequently was given the offer, quote, 'that I was not able to refuse.'"

Though she is not Alaskan, Trish Ellis was born in Kodiak, daughter of a Coast Guard chief petty officer who was stationed there for several years. Like most military families, they bounced around a bit before settling in Connecticut.

With an eye toward looming retirement from Thompsonville, but knowing he still had to work, Ellis, a 1989 graduate of Enfield High School, began casually looking for other opportunities about two years ago.

"I started poking around because having two younger children, it wasn't like I was going to stop working at 55," he said. "I was applying for a few chief's jobs here and there, just to see how far I'd get in the process, to see if I would be able to figure out what my resume was lacking and adjust it for later time. I applied [at Bayside] on a whim; I kind of laughed and said, 'hey look Trish, look who's hiring a fire chief.' I put in for it and was pretty surprised to get through the process. As I said, I was unable to accept it at that time, but how blessed and lucky am I that I get a second opportunity at a dream job."

Fire service runs in Ellis' bloodlines. His father, Don, was a town firefighter beginning in the early 1960s, and his older brother Don Jr. is a captain with the Enfield Fire Department with nearly 50 years of service. Following four years of Army active duty with the 10th Mountain Division, Ellis's son Matt is a firefighter in Norwalk. Ellis' sister Deb married Paul Chapin, who recently retired after more than a half-century in Enfield, and sister Lisa is a longtime official photographer for fire departments in Enfield and East Windsor.

"Obviously it's been a part of my life since I was born," he said. "My childhood was spent at the fire station on Weymouth Road with my dad and all of his buddies that he was on the department with. Mostly guys that unfortunately like my dad have passed on now, but whose legacy has really stuck with me."

Ellis may be leaving Enfield, but the town will never leave him.

"I grew up three quarters of a mile from where I am selling my home now of 28 years," the 52-year-old said. "I spent a year living in Willimantic; that is the only break. Enfield is the town that raised me, educated me, put me in a position to do the things I've been able to do. My brother and sisters, five of my children have been educated through the Enfield school system and have all gone on to be productive members of society, including serving our nation honorably in the military.

"My wife was educated all the way through in the Enfield public school system; we actually grew up seven houses away from each other, and the big separation was the fact that she's several years younger than me. We met because she worked for EMS and I work for the fire department, so again emergency services is integral in my life and my family's life. Our kids were raised in an environment where Mom would come home in uniform and take over the domestic duties, then Dad left for his shift in uniform."

It will be a huge adjustment for Ellis, and not just the fact that the Alaska Time Zone is four hours behind the East Coast.

"The bulk of my family is remaining in Enfield; they are older children who are remaining in southern New England," he said. "They will be out every summer to see us, we will be here every summer and at other times we'll travel back and forth, but they're not going to be around the corner. Technology obviously makes that a little bit easier, but those are definitely things I'll miss. Again, it's just a cool town, it's a cool state, I love history and there's so much of it here."