‘Be a good neighbor’: After 43 years in elected office in Spokane County, Sharon Colby shares a few life lessons

It was about 20 minutes after 7 on a crisp January morning in 1980, when Sharon Colby’s neighbor started beating on her door.

The 28-by-60-foot garage that lay a stretch limousine’s length away from her front porch was engulfed in flames. Her oldest son’s Camaro, her husband’s 1935 Ford Phaeton, her youngest son’s bike and a few chickens were reduced to ash in minutes.

Colby went into shock. Her neighbor dialed the fire station. Then the station sent a call out to find the nearest volunteer firefighter in Colby’s neighborhood. To get the station’s firetruck, the volunteer had to drive 2 miles past Colby’s garage, still ablaze, grab the truck and then head back. By the time he made it to her property, the entire roof of her three-bay garage had caved in.

As she assessed the damage from her porch, a gas can ignited and soared upwards, like a rocket ship. It landed next to her mailbox, 200 feet from her front door.

Weeks later, when it was not so cold outside, Colby and her husband began to clean up the debris. The firefighters surmised that the fire started because a heat lamp, used to keep the chickens warm in the winter, had exploded and sent hot shards of glass into the straw below.

While they sifted through the charred remains of their garage, a captain with the Cheney fire department went up and asked the couple for $40. The district needed to raise about $10,000 to construct a new building, so they were asking every resident to pitch in.

“Before he left, almost like an afterthought, he said, ‘Oh yes, and by the way, we need more volunteers for our station,’ ” Colby said.

Today, the 84-year-old Colby credits that one offhand comment as the catapult that launched her into the world of fire service: first as a Spokane County Fire District 3 volunteer firefighter, and later as a fire commissioner, where she’s served in the same position for the last 36 years.

In between, she joined the Liberty School Board. When her final term ended on the fire commission as the new year began, Colby had served in elected office in Spokane County for more than 43 years, and she served in both positions at the same time for six of those years.

Saddened by the fire that destroyed her garage and instilled with a desire to help the community, Colby and her husband decided they both wanted to be volunteer firefighters. But her husband’s demanding job as a manager at Melcher Manufacturing, a company that makes composite ramps for trucks, forced him to reconsider.

“That brings the tale to the fall of 1980,” Colby said.

Colby helped round up eight women, including herself, who were interested in being volunteer firefighters. A training officer with the fire department taught them at the local Grange hall, and they learned rather quickly how to fight fire. Not only did they learn everything the men did, but they were so worried about making fools of themselves that they went above and beyond, taking extensive notes, drawing diagrams and listening attentively to everything that came out of their training officer’s mouth.

By the end of 1980, the eight women were full-fledged volunteer firefighters.

“I went on a fire to a trailer, and this man who was a trained firefighter, supposedly – we were a rural district, and we didn’t take life too seriously,” Colby said. “But he was using his pike pole, and he was pulling on the side of the trailer when it wasn’t necessary.”

Because Colby and her female colleagues were so well-trained, she said the men in the district were forced to step up their game. The last thing the men wanted was to be shown up. The result was that every firefighter in the district, man or woman, became extremely competent at combating flames.

“We set an example, not out of pride, but because we didn’t want to be laughed at,” Colby said.

After serving a little less than a year as a volunteer firefighter, the responsibilities of a housewife whisked Colby away. With six boys living in the house, including her husband, Colby stepped away from being a firefighter about a year after she started.

“That’s why I’m no longer a volunteer,” Colby said. “Because I had to stay home and cook dinner.”

But returning to life as a stay-at-home mom left Colby upset. Really upset.

Instead of moping, she found other ways of getting involved in the community. In June 1982, she was appointed to an empty seat on the Liberty School District board. Colby went on to win the seat in an election in 1983 and was re-elected twice more. Somewhere during this time, she served on the Cheney Cemetery Association board for 10 years. She wanted to encourage members of the community to clean graves and take better care of the three cemeteries in the region. The best way to accomplish that goal, at least in her mind, was to be in a position of leadership to orchestrate that change.

She took repeated trips back to the fire station and slowly became more involved with the happenings of the department. Before long, she was writing a fire district newsletter, which she kept at for about 25 years until someone was hired to fill the position.

In 1987, she served as the campaign chairman on a committee aimed at passing a one-year levy to build a new fire station. Two years later, in 1989, she ran for fire commissioner and won. It was a victory that seemed to surprise even the determined Colby.

Her opponent during that 1989 race was a retired firefighter from Seattle. She imagined his experience would outweigh her connection to the community. She squeaked out a win by 25 votes.

“I was also a member of a sorority here in Cheney,” Colby said. “So I have joked, I think all my fellow sisters in the sorority went home and told their husbands, ‘You vote for her or else.’ ”

Over the course of the past 36 years, Colby has set goals, approved budgets and policies, and served as a liaison between the people and the fire district. Spokane County Fire District 3 covers 570 square miles of southwestern Spokane County. Its boundaries span nearly a third of the county.

For 16 years, she even served as a state leader on the Washington Fire Commissioners Association board. As part of this role, Colby regularly visited Olympia, where she represented Ferry, Stevens, Pend Oreille, Lincoln and Spokane counties.

“I had realized that my fire district isn’t isolated in the world,” she said. “We help our neighbors and we cross boundaries. We helped in Lincoln County, and they’d help in our county. I began to see how this works. It’s like pieces of a puzzle, but it makes a better picture if you get the pieces in the right place.”

While serving in this role, a colleague suggested that she apply for the State Fire Protection Policy Board, a new initiative at the time. After being appointed by Gov. Gary Locke, Colby worked to set up a mobilization plan for districts to use in the face of more dangerous and widespread wildfires.

Colby rose the ranks at the state level and became the vice president. It was assumed by many, she said, that she would become the next president. But when her husband was diagnosed with cancer, Colby realized she didn’t want to travel across the state anymore. Her husband died in 2015, but she continued to serve as a fire commissioner on a local level until her term ended on Wednesday.

“I recognize I’ve got huge shoes to try to fill,” said Tim Flock, the man elected to fill Colby’s position. “I just look forward to trying to help lead our organization in the same fashion that she has, with an openness in our heart for all of our staff. And making sure that people are seen and heard, from the citizens that we serve, to the firefighters that are trying to serve them.”

Flock referred to Colby as a trailblazer. Now that he’s stepping into her role, he hopes to carry her ideals and continue to serve the community in outstanding ways. A well-known core principle among firefighters, Colby said, is to save lives and save property. Colby adds a third thing, something rooted in what it means to be Sharon Colby: “Be a good neighbor.”

After decades of public service on the fire commissioners board, the cemetery board and the school board (she even once created a newspaper for a year called the Spangle Banner), Colby said she’s ready to give retirement a try. She admits she’s looking forward to sewing clothes to give away to toddlers, crocheting beanies and neck scarfs, and just enjoying more time with her family.

“I am all set to become the typical little granny,” Colby said. “I’ve got gray hair. I’ve got wrinkles. I recently bought myself a nice rocking chair, I have a cat, and I crochet in my spare time.”

Confidence and a strong desire to help people remains central to Colby’s philosophy even as she begins a new chapter of her life. She credits her abundance of confidence and kindness to the teachings of her grandmother. Because Colby was born during World War II, her father was in the Navy and her mother worked at the Velox Naval Depot in Spokane Valley. Her eccentric grandmother, who was born in 1873, took over the role of nurturing a young Colby when she was just 2 years old.

Her grandmother purchased homes in the Spokane area and hired people to fix them. Sometimes she would sell them, other times the family would just rotate from one house to the next. Between the age of 2 and 16, Colby said she ended up moving 48 times across 29 different houses. All of that moving occurred just in Spokane, and it left Colby, a single child, feeling not quite as normal as her peers. What it did give her, by the time she graduated from Lewis and Clark High School in 1959, was a knack at making and keeping new friends.

“I didn’t know what it was like to have a brother or sister,” Colby said, pausing momentarily so as not to allow emotions stifle her speech. “But when I finished training as a firefighter, I came home and I said, ‘I now have a whole house full, I now have 100 brothers.’ ”

“And I meant it.”