Training Officer Michael Duran retired from the Sedona Fire District on Tuesday, Sept. 5, after 20 years with the district, with a ceremony at Sedona Fire Station 1.

After only a few days in retirement, Duran will be starting as fire chief for the Winslow Fire District on Monday, Sept. 11, and said that he plans to spend the first month on the job sleeping in the Winslow fire station while he and his wife Claudia search for housing.

“While this chapter is closed, another one is opened,” SFD Fire Chief Ed Mezulis said at the start of the ceremony. “It has been a long time since I’ve seen someone this excited about a new opportunity … It’s a lesson to all that one should never think the plan is always going to go as you think it’s going to go, nothing is chiseled in stone.”

Jordan Baker will take over Baker’s role of training officer to oversee daily duty training for SFD firefighters and Eric “Buzz” Lechowsk will be involved with the training program as well, focusing on planning, recruitment and retention.

Mezulis commended Duran for reshaping the SFD training division over the last decade. During his tenure at SFD, Duran helped mentor everybody from firefighters to battalion chiefs and oversaw 15 fire fighter academies, several engineer tests and one battalion chief test.

“The advice I give people coming into the field is [to] know where your moral compass is and your ethics and have a base that you could start off of and, then be accountable for your actions. Also be flexible with how you are because with the schedules, it makes it hard,” Duran said.

He attributed his own moral compass to faith as well as his large family, which includes his wife Claudia Duran and his aunt Tillie Pickering, who were in attendance and received flowers during the ceremony, as well as his five children and his 11 grandchildren. Noting that his father was in the U.S. Army and that his mother helped make airplane wings, “their characters is what my moral fiber is made up [of],” Duran said.

Duran said that one of his most challenging days on the job came in May 2008.

“We were responding in an engine in Oak Creek Canyon and we could see the call it was for a [motor vehicle accident] on fire, we could see the column of smoke as [we were] responding,” Durant recalled. “As I pull up, people are screaming at us that the lady in the car is trapped. I pull the hose line, and another engine behind us pulls up and tells me, ‘You only have so much water because we [have] no hydrants in there. I [went] in there and we got to the lady and it was too late and she’s already perished. But the car was fully involved … I did the best with that but the challenging part was after we put the fire out having to assist the coroner to remove the body.”

He also described joyous memories at SFD, such as sharing a meal with staff and experiencing camaraderie around the table, as well as archetypical firefighter moments such as getting kittens out of trees.

During the ceremony, Duran presented several gifts to SFD staff to commemorate their time together. He also gave his wife Claudia a photographand plaque of their trip to Hawaii last year.

Claudia presented her husband with a new commemorative plaque dealing with his tenure at SFD, which was a companion piece to a plaque she had made for him in 2001 when he was named Firefighter of the Year by the Highlands Fire District in 2000. He also received a Volunteer of the Year award after volunteering with them since 1993.

“We’re all unique and God has given us many talents and many gifts, and Michael’s gifts are still giving,” Claudia Duran said. “This came about very spontaneously. He was dropping off books from his library to Winslow where he had taught some Firefighter 102 classes. They told him the chief job had closed. [Michael said], ‘I hope [you] get a good chief. If he needs help, let me know.’ Then we were dropping off more books because we make a lot of trips to New Mexico, pilgrimages to Santa Fe, Chimayo. “They said, ‘Michael, the chief’s position is open again, why don’t you consider putting into it? You’re only five months out from your drop at Sedona.’ “Michael and I talked about it and I said, ‘You have a choice and if you feel the calling to do this, and you can help out a department, then I am behind you 100%.’”

“There isn’t an ocean too deep,” family friend Gloria Fraire sang to the crowd as she performed the Peggy March song “I Will Follow Him” to emphasize the point. “A mountain so high it can keep me away. I must follow him.”