Forty-seven years isn’t enough for Tom Haneline, but it will have to do.
After putting it off for years, he’s finally retiring; his last shift was Thursday. With nearly five decades of service, the 69-year-old battalion chief has set a record for longest career with the Tacoma Fire Department.

People have been asking Haneline for at least 15 years when he plans to retire. He thought about it but couldn’t come up with a good enough reason.
“You gotta love it. The work’s good and the people are better,” he said. “If I could do it another 30 years, I would. But this is my time.”
Haneline realized it was time to go while attending his 50-year high school reunion last summer. Surrounded by former classmates pushing 70, Haneline realized he should consider the next chapter in life.
Next up is ticking items off his bucket list, starting with traveling and learning to strum better on the guitar.
But first, his co-workers will send him off with a goodbye barbecue and a song written in his honor.
The lyrics were penned by firefighter Al Nejmeh, who has looked up to Haneline since the battalion chief threw his support behind Nejmeh when he joined the force at age 49.
Nejmeh began writing the song, “Forty Years,” seven years ago to celebrate the span of Haneline’s career and promised to write a new verse every year until Haneline retired.
“He’s a great man and a great leader and a great chief,” Nejmeh said. “He really cares about his people, and our clients. I can’t say enough good things about him.”
Haneline joined the department June 1, 1965. He recently found a pay stub shoved in his locker from that first year, when he started at station 2 on Tacoma Avenue South.
A fresh-faced 22-year-old then, Haneline was following in his father’s footsteps. Father and son worked at the same station for about nine years before the elder Haneline retired as a battalion chief.
Haneline never dreamed of being a firefighter. But it was a solid career.
“When I walked into station 2 though, the first shift there, I got the feeling like, ‘This is it,’ ” he recalled.
He was enamored with the veterans-turned-firefighters, the equipment, the station that smelled of smoke. He reveled in simple compliments and took pride in every task, even scrubbing the kitchen.
Haneline studied in his spare time and was promoted to lieutenant in 1971, captain in 1988 and battalion chief in 1992.
“I didn’t think I’d work (the latter job) 20 years, but it flew by like that,” he said with a snap of his fingers. “It’s been a challenge to be half as good as the people I’m working with.”
Asked about the most memorable incidents he has responded to, Haneline slowly shakes his head.
All the fires have blurred together. Scents or driving by the scenes, however, flood him with memories.
There was the old building on Sawyer Street that went up in flames in 1978 and was so hot that it burned a hose Haneline and two others were using inside. He almost went back inside, thinking a member of his crew hadn’t made it out, when he felt a comforting hand on his shoulder.
Or the smell of Johnny’s seasoning salt and how it brings back the image of a worker who lost his arm after reaching into a mixer at a local plant.

Others in the department lavish praise upon Haneline, describing him as respectful, dedicated, professional, humble. Deputy Chief Faith Mueller, who once worked under Haneline, called him “an icon of a professional fire officer.”
“If you ask all of our 300 (employees), you would not hear a word about him that’s not glowing,” she said.
It’s these types of people, these types of bonds, that have kept Haneline working for 47 years. But, it’s his time.

stacia.glenn@thenewstribune.com
253-597-8653

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REPOST (Courtesy of The New Tribune – Tacoma)