'What would Harry do?': Recent retiree Harry Schumer looks back on 28 years of firefighting in Cape Girardeau

When Harry Schumer says it takes a certain type of person to walk into a burning building, it's not bravado -- there's just no better way to describe the essential truth of firefighting.

Schumer doesn't seem too sure why he enjoyed fighting fires so much for 28 years.

"You're always on the edge when you go into a fire," he says. "To say that we're adrenaline junkies, that's pretty well true. If you don't like that, you're not going to be a firefighter in the first place."

Schumer's a gentle man, pithy and soft-spoken, with a smile just crooked enough to make him immediately likable. During his years with the Cape Girardeau Fire Department, he earned a reputation as a calm operator.

But he admits he knew next to nothing about firefighting when he first applied for the position.

"I had never stepped into a fire department before then," he says. "I really had no direction."

Part of the allure was the sheer difficulty of the application process.

Master Firefighter Harry Schumer recently retired from the Cape Girardeau Fire Department after 28 years of service. (Laura Simon)

"It's such an intricate, hard application to get into. There were 80-something applications for three positions," he explains. "The more steps I passed, the more determined I was. I was going to see it through."

He says his career path might in part be due to a long-held fascination with fire itself.

"His mom always said he was a firebug," Schumer's wife, Belenda, points out, making Harry blush and clarify.

Cutline-File Credit:Master Firefighter Harry Schumer recently retired from the Cape Girardeau Fire Department after 28 years of service. (Laura Simon)

"I had always liked to see how fire worked, how it moved, where it would go," he says. "Not that I'd be an arsonist, just the opposite. But they taught me [how fire behaved]."

He says humility and work ethic were what put him through the first few years on the job.

"Everything burns differently, to a point. You never know everything," he says. "If you go into a job thinking that you know everything, that's when you get hurt."

But it wasn't just the adrenaline of fire he enjoyed. When he started, one of his favorite things about the job was hitching a ride on the tailboards of the fire engine.

"It was so much fun to me," he says. "It could be sleet and rain and we're hanging on the back going down the interstate."

His real niche, however, turned out to be extrication. He was so good at getting people out that younger firefighters approached situations asking each other, 'What would Harry do?'

Schumer's extrication reputation was tested in April 2008, when he and Belenda came across a wreck while out for a drive. The driver, a St. Louis minister, had lost control when a tire blew out. Although he'd been unhurt when the truck rolled, the man was trapped inside the flipped vehicle. Two firefighters-in-training had already stopped to help, but had been unable to free him. Fuel was leaking from the truck when Schumer arrived.

"Then the car got on fire," he says.

Although he was off-duty, he was still an extrication specialist.

"You're not gonna bend metal with a piece of spaghetti," he says. So he got down between the ground and the hood of the upside-down truck and began punching the windshield with his fist, much to Belenda's chagrin.

She was used to turning off the television when she knew Harry was working so that she wouldn't worry. She wasn't used to seeing him in action.

"I'm sitting here saying, 'Harry, uh, you need to uh, move,'" Belenda says. "I'm wanting him to step back, because he's mine."

"And I sorta gave her that look like, 'I don't got time for that right now,'" Harry answers.

When he finally got a hole punched in the windshield, Schumer remembers the man crawling around, asking for his cellphone.

"I thought that was a little odd, but I was busy," he says.

Schumer didn't know that the firefighters who had arrived before him had made clear to the minister how dire his situation was. He was trapped and the car was on fire. They had passed him a cellphone to call his wife.

Schumer widened the windshield hole enough for the man to escape.

"It wasn't 90 seconds before the entire thing went up," he says.

Schumer received awards from the Missouri State House of Representatives, the Highway Patrol, VFW, City of Cape Girardeau and a handful more for his heroism.

Leaving the fire department was difficult, he says, and his co-workers' effusive farewells didn't help.

"I loved working for the City of Cape. I quit on a high note, but I wanted retirement, too," he says. "I don't want to work until I'm 65 and then at 68 be gone."

Now, he's just enjoying the time away, he says. He spends a lot of time in the woods near his home in Biehle, Missouri, and says he and Belenda are looking forward to travel -- maybe to the Smokies.