Roosevelt has 1st female fire commissioner

The Roosevelt Fire District Board of Fire Commissioners has appointed its first female fire commissioner, officials said.

Pamela Williams, an emergency medical technician with the Roosevelt Fire Department, was appointed by board members at a special meeting on July 31, said Clara Gillens-Eromosele, fire district secretary.

Williams, 42, is replacing Robert Wade Jr. Wade was elected to the position in January 2011 for a term ending in 2016, but he retired in May and moved out of the Roosevelt Fire District. Williams will serve until Dec. 31, when she would have to be elected to the position, Gillens-Eromosele said.

"I just think that it will be a positive change because for so many years it has been run by the men," Williams, an elementary schoolteacher in Roosevelt Union Free School District, said last week.

There are five commissioners in the fire district, said Wayne Nelson, chairman of the district board. He said that Williams was selected for the position because she is impartial, a proponent of education and training, and takes the initiative to seek out new techniques and equipment for the department.

"She brings the viewpoint of a large part of the community that's female and of ethnic [African-American] background," Nelson said.

Williams will help oversee financing, purchases of equipment and administrative decisions within the fire district and fire department, Nelson said. The fire district encompasses the Roosevelt Fire Department headquarters at 56 W. Centennial Ave. and the hose and engine company at 325 Babylon Tpke.