Retiring Lieutenant Trading in Fires for Football

John Watt wanted to be like his big brother, Al, so he started testing to become a firefighter.

The first department to hire him was Janesville, but having grown up in the area, Watt’s eyes were on the Waukesha Fire Department.

A year later, in February 1985, Watt joined the Waukesha Fire Department. He spent is last day on the job Tuesday as he is retiring as a lieutenant in the department.

“I saw how much he enjoyed the job and how much he liked helping people out,” Watt said about his older brother. “I liked the type of job and that piqued my interest.”

But when it comes to looking back at the nearly three decades of service to the Waukesha Fire Department, the best part of the job isn’t the number of calls he was on.

“The thing that I will take away from my work here is the guys that I’ve worked with,” Watt said. “There is 100 percent no way that they wouldn’t be tops on that list here. The guys and girls are fantastic and definitely the most memorable part of the job and working with them to help out the citizens in the community – that is why we all got into firefighting. It’s been great.”

Watt didn’t own up to any original pranks he pulled on any of the other firefighters. Still, there were plenty of ways the firefighters and paramedics would complete innocent pranks for fun – especially when they involved shaving cream and firecrackers under bathroom doors.

“It would be pretty tough to come up with an original prank around here, because over the years there have been so many played on so many people that the keep perpetuating themselves,” Watt said. “If you come up with an original prank around here, you are coming up with something pretty good, because it is tough to find something that hasn’t already been done.”

Watt also has advice for any future Waukesha firefighters.

“Enjoy the experience, because it is going to be a fantastic experience,” Watt said. “With all the new technologies involved in firefighting and the EMS portion of it … get involved in as many things as they can. … I pretty much got involved in every aspect of the job. We are not a big enough department like Milwaukee where you have a lot of fires where every day you are planning on going out to a fire. It is nice to be involved with many different things so that you can see all the different aspects of the department.”

Retirement Plans: Family, Football and Foundation

Watt and his wife, Connie, who also recently retired, are planning a bucketlist European vacation cruise later this summer to celebrate. But when they return, they won’t exactly be slowing down.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows the Watt family to learn Watt’s retirement will involved a lot of football. His oldest son, J.J. Watt, was the NFL’s Defensive MVP while playing for the Houston Texans, while the young two Watt brothers are playing for the Wisconsin Badgers this fall.

“We are going to traveling this fall to see Wisconsin games and as many Houston games as we can,” Watt said.

The Watt’s will spend a week every month in Houston helping expand the J.J. Watt Foundation, which provides after-school athletic opportunities for children.

“His foundation is established now in Texas and it is growing every day,” Watt said “It is going to be significantly larger down there than it is here when time goes by.”

As Watt steps away from the fire department, he leaves behind a few Texans and Wisconsin Badgers fans who are cheering on the three football players they’ve known since they were “knee-high to a grasshopper,” Watt said.

“If there is a Texans game that they can watch and if there is a Wisconsin game that they can watch, I can almost guarantee that all TVs in the station are turned to it,” Watt said.