Greg Corn retires after 42 years as Marysville’s fire chief

MARYSVILLE — Greg Corn was 20 years old and he needed a job.

He’d worked for a boat manufacturer, a telephone pole company and as a dishwasher.

He saw a sign that Fire District 12, north of Marysville, needed volunteers.

On April 1, 1973, Corn joined the district as a volunteer firefighter. That became a 42-year career.

Friday marks Corn’s last day as the Marysville fire chief. A retirement reception was held Thursday at Fire Station 62 on Shoultes Road.

Corn, who turns 63 next month, hopes everyone at the fire department enjoys the work as much as he did.

“It’s very rewarding,” he said. “We get to really be involved and connected with the community.”

As a teen, Corn had moved to Marysville from Kansas when his parents relocated for jobs at Boeing. He graduated from Marysville High School.

His colleagues on Thursday called him “a self-described dishwasher from Kansas,” and a man who still drives a 15-year-old Chevrolet. He was a good listener, someone who let others stand in the limelight and who trusted his crews to make decisions, they said.

Still, when Chief Corn said no, that meant no, Marysville Fire Battalion Chief Scott Goodale said with a laugh.

Eric Andrews, the fire chief in Gold Bar and an assistant chief in Clearview, called Corn “a voice of reason” at the county chiefs meetings.

“I’m going to miss that,” Andrews said. “He was always there to ask reasonable questions and everyone respected that.”

Corn never was afraid to share his thoughts, and those thoughts always were valuable, Marysville Mayor Jon Nehring said.

Corn was “completely and totally honest,” and a man others turn to for advice in critical moments, Police Chief Rick Smith said.

“He would get you laughing and get you working through whatever it was,” Smith said.

Corn has three children and seven grandchildren. Many of them, plus his father, Virgil Corn, joined firefighters from around Snohomish County at Thursday’s reception. His grandson, Bryce Human, was there, too, in uniform as a new firefighter recruit in Getchell. Corn hired Getchell’s fire chief, Travis Hots, as a recruit in Marysville years ago.

Corn was a sincere and subtle boss, Hots said. Sometimes the chief would give him advice and it’d take a week or two for it to sink in.

“When you speak, people listen,” Hots told Corn.

A vintage photo of Corn also was on display from his early days as a firefighter. The mayor joked that he couldn’t tell if it was Greg Corn or Greg Brady in the picture.

Once, when Corn was a young firefighter, he was called to help a woman who had fallen 30 feet down an abandoned well near Lakewood. Back then, they didn’t have fancy rescue equipment: They had rope.

“I was the one chosen to be lowered down into the well,” he said.

He wrapped the ropes around the woman, and they both were lifted back to safety. Then it was maybe 30 years later and he was at a Little League game.

“A little girl came up to me and said you saved my grandma when she fell in the well,” he said.

The woman was watching from the bleachers.

Corn always tried to keep the fire department’s focus on being community-minded, he said.

He was part of the years-long effort to combine the fire district with the city fire department in 1992. It was a huge accomplishment, for both organizations and for him, he said.

He became fire chief the next year. One change he’s especially proud of was the switch from relying on hospital-based paramedics. That happened in 1997, when the district hired its first firefighter-paramedics.

Corn was on duty for the 1998 Arlington Manor boarding home fire that killed eight people, still the deadliest blaze in Snohomish County history.

Over the years, he’s counted four airplane crashes and five train derailments, including a propane fire that burned for three days in Lakewood in the early 1990s. Before widespread use of safety gates, a lot more cars were struck by trains, he said.

In those early days, when “The Waltons” was one of the most popular shows on TV, Corn was a young man and Marysville was a small town.

He lived there most of his life before moving to Arlington. In retirement, he hopes to do some traveling. By his math, after 15,330 days in the fire service, that sounds pretty good.

Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com.