In addition to our regular announcements of retirements and promotions, another new addition to the Raleigh FD command staff occurred earlier this year. On February 1, 2021, Ray S. Enoch was hired as Asst. Chief of Professional Development[1]. And of historical note, he’s the first assistant chief hired from “outside” since the department’s start as a career organization in 1912. [2]
Chief Enoch is a 21-year veteran of the career fire service, beginning with two years on the Burlington FD, followed by fourteen years in Chapel Hill, including as fire inspector/investigator. He also served as Asst. Fire Marshal in Mecklenburg County, and most recently as Deputy Fire Chief/Fire Marshal for the Town of Carrboro from April 2018 to January 2019.
While in Carrboro, he also served under Interim Fire Chief Brad Harvey, who was hired by the town after retiring from Raleigh in 2017 as Asst. Chief of Operations. [3] Chief Harvey, in turn, returned to Raleigh as Interim Fire Chief in November 2019, and served until the hiring of Fire Chief Herbert Griffin, who started on September 8, 2020.
Chief Griffin hails from Houston. He’s a 24-year veteran of the Houston FD, and mostly recently held the rank of Asst. Chief of Operations. He’s the city’s seventeenth career-era Fire Chief and succeeded John T. McGrath, who retired on November 1, 2019. He was selected from a pool of some 65 candidates and through an extensive hiring process.
Chief Griffin is the fourth Fire Chief from outside the department[4], following Thomas T. Kuster (from Louisville, served 1983-86), Sherman A. Pickard (from Raleigh, served 1986-95), and John T. McGrath (from Philadelphia, served 2006-19).
[1] Effective January 1, 2021, the Training Division was renamed as Professional Development.
[2] The OG assistant chief was Charles D. Farmer, hired in 1912, who served under Fire Chief Sherwood Brockwell, who succeeded Brockwell in 1914, and resigned in 1919 to work for the state, and later became the first commander of the State Highway Patrol.
[3] Along similar lines, retired Raleigh Asst. Chief R. Lee Matthews (1963) came out of retirement to serve the Town of Cary as Interim Fire Chief in 1967. His successor in Cary was C. Frank Ayscue that year, but who left the town to join the Raleigh Fire Department in 1968, and retired as a Senior FF in 1989. To further the Raleigh <> Cary connection, two former Raleigh Captains have served as Cary Chief of Department, Ned Perry and the town’s current Fire Chief, Mike Cooper.
[4] Fire Chief Lewis F. Hicks kinda sorta also falls into that category. He entered the department in June 1913, but left on military leave in 1917. After his military service ended in 1922, he worked for the state highway commission from 1922 to 1923. He returned to Raleigh as Chief of Department on June 1, 1923. Chief Hicks died three years later, off-duty. He’s one of three city fire chiefs that have died in office. The others are Fire Chief Alvin B. Lloyd (1955) and Fire Chief Clarence R. Puryear (1974).
Leave a Reply