Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

OBITUARY: CLELL WEST, 1934-2021:

Retired Las Vegas fire chief leaves lasting impression

Former Las Vegas Fire Chief Cell West

Courtesy

Former Las Vegas Fire & Rescue Chief Clell West is shown with his wife, Stella Ruth West, in 2014. The venerated “firefighter’s firefighter” died at age 86.

The young girl knew her grandfather, Las Vegas Fire & Rescue Chief Clell West, had responded to a major blaze. She didn’t know the extent of the fire until she saw a newscast interrupt the program she was watching on television.

Las Vegas Fire & Rescue Chief Clell West

Las Vegas Fire & Rescue Chief Clell West poses with fire department personnel in this undated photo. West, a revered official who retired in 1996, died on May 29. He was 86. Launch slideshow »

The traumatizing images showed flames shooting out of a building and windows crashing onto the ground, she recalled last week, some decades later.

Rachel Partin remembers being inconsolable and crying herself to sleep. She was about 6 years old.

But when West made it home, he woke her up, cuddled her in his arms, and told her, “It’s OK, I’m always going to be here,” she said, pausing to cry.

West’s granddaughter can still smell the smoke seeping from his hair and clothes that night, just how the distinct aroma that emanates from pipe tobacco brings her back to her childhood, when West would let his grandchildren play in his Las Vegas home office while he managed the fire department.

West, who willed himself from being a cotton picker in Texas as a boy with rags for shoes into becoming a highly revered, consequential fire official who led Las Vegas Fire & Rescue into the 21st century, died May 29.

He was 86. 

West is fondly remembered as a sensitive, loving man who commanded any room’s attention with a loud, enthusiastic voice used to connect on a personal level with everyone in it.

His loved ones cherish the wisdom and the abundance of advice and support he always provided them, while former colleagues say they have immense gratitude for West, his friendship and the professional paths and personal connections they’ve forged thanks to him.

“Being a father was probably the most important thing for him,” said Sherry Partin, his daughter, whose earliest memories include singing with him on his lap as he plucked a ukulele. “He grew up without a father and he wanted his kids ... to have everything that he did not have growing up.”

West, who had a gift for the written and spoken word, never spoke about his own legacy. But he leaves an enormous one behind, not only through vivid memories but also immortalized on paper with introspective poems and essays. Partin cried over the phone as she read one of his pieces titled, “Dad.”

Reading it now is still “crushing,” she said. 

• • •

West was born to a farming family in Searcy, Ark., on Aug. 23, 1934.

His path led him to Lubbock, Texas, where he picked cotton as a child, and then to Phoenix, where he met the love of his life in middle school. Both were 13.

Stella Ruth Webb married him shortly after graduating from high school and the couple had three children: Michael, Sherry and Ricky. His wife, “Ruthie,” was with him until his death.

To support his young family, West worked two jobs, as a paramedic with the Arizona Fire Department and as a drywaller in construction. He put himself through night school at the University of Phoenix and Phoenix College, where he fell in love with writing.

Working around the clock, West never lost sight of being a present and loving father. “He was always there for everything,” Sherry Partin said. “It never felt like he wasn’t a part of our lives, he was just always there teaching us everything.”

That included teaching them how to camp and fish, and to grow their faith, she added. “Family was very important for him.”

West climbed the ranks through the Phoenix Fire Department, ending his 24-year career there as an executive assistant chief before relocating to Las Vegas as a chief at the fire department. He retired in 1996.

Rachel Partin said West would “poke around shops’’ to buy his grandchildren rare, fun toys.

He would have a growing collection ready for them when they visited, and then he would lie with them on the floor to play with the children. He would have them sit on his lap and would read them books.

• • •

Under West’s leadership, Las Vegas Fire & Rescue in 1992 became one of a few agencies to obtain an I.S.O. Class 1 classification, the highest rank fire services can attain by evaluating assets, such as the water system and the 911 system, said Tim Szymanski, the longtime spokesman for the Las Vegas agency.

One of West’s programs trained Las Vegas hotel workers on what to do if a blaze broke out. As a nationally recognized expert, he is credited with training hundreds, if not thousands, more people across the U.S. on fire safety, some of whom have gone on to leadership positions. The Department of Justice consulted with West on national security. 

Roy Lawson befriended West in a bowling league hosted at the old Showboat. They played on opposing teams.

It’s there where West offered Lawson, who worked for the City of Las Vegas’ department of design and development, a job on his executive team at the fire department as a budget analyst.

West had talked him into working under him for two years. “Well, that blossomed into a 25-year career” with Las Vegas Fire & Rescue and an even longer friendship, Lawson said.

In Las Vegas, the friends golfed, played softball and shared beers. In the later years, when both moved to different parts of Oregon, they continued to exchange Christmas cards and letters.

With the full support of the Oregon Fire Department and help from Las Vegas Fire & Rescue, Lawson is one of the people coordinating West’s graveside firefighters ceremony Monday in Salem, Ore.

“Chief West was instrumental for me having a 30-year career with fire services,” said Lawson, who works with the Portland Fire Department. “If he didn’t give me that chance in the beginning, I wouldn’t have had this wonderful experience,” he said about the friends he and his wife have met along the way. “We just have a lot to be thankful for because of Chief West.”

West promised city officials that before he retired, he would appoint a full-time public information officer. The officials set their eyes on Szymanski, who had worked for five years to coordinate public communications for the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996.

Immediately after the games closed, Szymanski and his wife were on their way to Las Vegas.

West was highly respectable and “ran a tight ship,” but was also a supportive boss who didn’t micromanage, Szymanski said.

Szymanski labeled him as a “firefighters’ firefighter” who would as easily administer the department as he would know the “nuts and bolts.” “He was right there with the guys in the station,” Szymanski said.

Although they only worked together for six months, Szymanski, who has worked under 25 fire chiefs, said West left a meaningful imprint on how he conducts his job.

“I really wish I could have worked longer with him,” he said. “I think I would have really enjoyed it.”

• • •

Rachel Partin is preparing, emotionally, to say her final goodbye to her grandfather. When West retired from Las Vegas Fire & Rescue, he was given a firehouse bell, which will be rung one last time at the funeral.

It’s the same bell she remembers sitting in his office ever since.

Rachel’s mother said she couldn’t “put into words” a description of her father’s legacy. Perhaps it’ll be his love for others.

“I just always knew he loved me,” Sherry Partin said, her voice breaking. “And I feel very blessed because I know other people that haven’t known the love of a father, and I did.”