Allan Appel Photo
Chief Alston congratulates Proto on day one of training.
The first time 56-year-old Robert Proto took the fire department’s grueling physical agility test, he failed the sledgehammer swing.
The second time he failed as he fell with the heavy mannequin he was dragging before reaching 75 feet.
The third time — the last try allowed — he aced the grueling, seven-station activity test that simulates tasks he’ll tackle as a second-career firefighter.
Result: Tuesday morning, along with 40 others, the Morris Cove resident began his first day of training at the fire academy on Ella Grasso Boulevard. He is the oldest — and one of the most physically fit — of trainees in memory, according to officials.
Perhaps the most senior ever in fact.
As the new class of 41 hit the books on their first day of training, Chief John Alston Jr. pronounced Proto a very strong candidate whose “perseverance paid off.”
The 56-year-old phenom did not appear out of nowhere.
He’s a 30-year veteran of the West Haven police department, retiring, as of Monday, as a captain. For all those years he has also kept in shape with a regimen centered around a five-to-six mile early morning run, regardless of the weather.
“It’s tough when it’s five degrees out,” he said.
Nevertheless, out Proto goes running, adding weight lifting and cross training to his workout, time permitting.
As lunch ended Tuesday and the trainees filed back into the classroom, their desk surfaces piled high with textbooks on handling hazardous materials, Proto (no relation to the Yale union leader of the same name) said the workout that has kept him in shape would have remained a part of his life, whether or not he had to compete with 20-year-olds to make the fire department.
“It gives me a feeling of well being. If I go a couple of days without training, it affects me emotionally,” he said.
Unlike other cops and firefighters, Proto didn’t grow up with role models in the family.
He said he got to know and respect the New Haven Fire Department when he spent 11 years, from 1993 to 2004, as part of a New Haven drug task force.
So when his pension maxed out at 30 years service in West Haven, he decided to make the switch. Another factor was a friend on the West Haven force for 20 years who had also made the shift to the Elm City fire department. “He’s been talking me into it” for a long time, Proto said.
He didn’t need a lot of convincing.
“I can’t see myself sitting home. Playing golf. I like to work. I took the [written] test, and it came out well,” he said.
“I knew I had to prepare” for the physical agility test, even with his daily workouts, he said.
“Once you get on that step mill, it was like I had never worked out [in my life],” he said.
The step mill is one of seven “stations,” of continuous activity that a candidate must complete in nine minutes in order to qualify to become a firefighter. The step mill simulates a firefighter climbing stairs in a tall building while wearing the full oxygen tank and other heavy equipment.
Like all the other men and five women who made it into the academy, Proto had to wear a 60-pound vest and, in effect, walk up 60 steps a minute for three minutes without interruption.
Proto said he had prepared for that, simulating the labor at his regular gym workout, and he passed.
But the sledge hammer swing — simulating opening a roof — and the dummy pull did thwart him on those first two tries, until he prevailed.
“It’s a testament to his preparation and determination” that he succeeded, said Alston. “He’s the kind of candidate I want.”
He’ll be hitting the books for the first seven or eight days of firefighter training and not getting actual firefighting gear until about a month into the 16 weeks of training, said Alston. “They won’t be live burning” — training in live fire situations — for two months.
Alston, who has been with the NHFD for only about two years, was not certain if Robert Proto is the oldest trainee ever at the academy.
“It’s not unusual to have candidates over 40,” said NHFD Director of Training Antonio Almodovar. This is the first time in his 12-year tenure as director that he has seen a 56-year-old cadet. He said he thinks Proto has set the record.
The rookie said that he feels confident that he, along with supportive classmates, will all get through the training well.