Sumner’s beloved pastor, chaplain, friend moves on

Joe Hibbard looks ahead to his next step with Tacoma Fire

By Avani Nadkarni/of The Herald

In his 12 years as lay pastor at Sumner Presbyterian Church and nearly a decade as the chaplain for the Sumner Fire Department and East Pierce Fire and Rescue after the merger, Joe Hibbard has seen it all.

His first call as Sumner Fire Department chaplain involved a young Edgewood girl who had been pinned between a telephone phone and a pickup truck while she was waiting for her school bus. He’s had to report to drownings at Lake Tapps, house fires and even had to inform East Pierce Fire and Rescue Chief Dan Packer’s wife that her husband had died while fighting fires in California. That was the gist of Hibbard’s job — to preside over fatalities, to inform families of a loved one’s death and to perform funerals.

“When my pager goes off, it’s not because they’re inviting me to a birthday party,” Hibbard said. “It’s never good news.”

Starting in February, his work load may be even heavier — Hibbard is planning to leave the Sumner area to replace the former Tacoma Fire chaplain as the sole chaplain for a district with 16 stations. The main reason, he explained, was that he’ll get paid — the East Pierce Fire and Rescue position was strictly voluntary.

“It’s a way for me to give back to the community,” Hibbard said of his chaplaincy. “To be able to be paid to do something that you want to do ... is something I wanted to pursue.”

Although he’s seen horrific scenes and helped families cope in the worst of times, Hibbard manages to stay calm, mainly because of support, he said.

During his run with the fire department, he often met with good friend and former Sumner Police Department chaplain Art Sphar, especially after particularly difficult calls.

“We had an agreement,” Hibbard said of their meetings. “It was helpful to meet up with him and discuss what we’d seen.”

Another thing that kept him sane is working at the church and involving himself in the fire department’s community-driven activities, like the annual pancake feed and giving the opening prayer at Sumner City Council meetings as well as presiding over weddings for firefighters. For five years in a row, Hibbard even dressed up as Santa Claus for the department-hosted holiday party.

“One thing the chaplaincy has offered me and afforded me to do is to meet a lot of people and make a lot of friends in Sumner,” he said, adding that he’ll continue to attend Sumner Presbyterian Church as a parishioner.

It wasn’t always apparent that the divorced father of two would be a man of God. Hibbard was born at Fort Lewis into a military family and moved around as a child. He graduated from high school in Kentucky and enlisted in the army. After his service, he ended up in Southern California, where he worked for Thrifty Drugs, which is now Rite-Aid.

“I didn’t like the air that I was breathing there,” he explained of his life in California.

When his then-wife was pregnant with their second child, Sheri, Hibbard packed her and their young son David up and moved back to Washington.

He continued working for Thrifty Drugs, then got a job in construction at his sister’s company, Tacoma’s Modern Door and Millwork. Somewhere along the way, he said, he lost his faith.

“I fell away from Christ for a long time ... when I was a young kid,” he explained.

Eighteen years ago, he found himself on the doorstep of a friend, who he said helped him get back to the church. While living here, he attended a two-year Presbytery program and then was invited to become a pastor in Sumner.

Then, Sphar, whom Hibbard calls “a good friend,” asked if he’d like to apply for position of Sumner Fire Department chaplain.

“I didn’t know anything about it,” Hibbard admitted.

He joined Sphar on his calls as police chaplain and decided he’d found his calling. He then went through a rigorous application and training process, which included the internationally-acclaimed Chaplains Training Academy in Burien, where he intensely studied everything from ethics and crisis response to personal stress management, terrorism and forensics.

As a reminder of his journey, Hibbard has decorated his Sumner Presbyterian Church office with pictures, paintings, figurines and drawings of lighthouses, many of them presents from friends and parishoners. They clutter nearly every square inch of the small space.

“Christ is the light of the world,” he explained. “I love lighthouses because I think they’re a reflection of Christ.”

Hibbard officially resigned his post from East Pierce Fire and Rescue in October 2009.

Right now, he’s working half the week at Sumner Presbyterian Church and the other half at Tacoma Fire and he’s working to phase himself in.

“We want to make sure the quality is the same,” Hibbard explained. “We don’t want anyone to notice a difference in services.”

Hibbard said he’s not planning to move from his Edgewood home, where he lives with daughter Sheri and two-year-old granddaughter McKenzie.

He’s looking forward to his next step, he added. He’s preparing himself for many more calls than the amount he got in Sumner —which varied from one or two a month to two or three a day — but he said he knows he’ll be able to handle it.

“It’s so important for me to be able to be a presense of Christ in a situation where people are at their worst,” he said. “My heart’s always been with helping people.”