Jack Brown’s face was bright red — a firefighter’s glow — during a massive Downtown fire in the hottest part of a late-June day.

But he wore a full grin and watery eyes, knowing it would be his last big firefight. A medical technician checked his blood pressure as a precaution, and Mr. Brown was a cool 118-over-80.

Mr. Brown retires Monday after 38 years as a St. Joseph firefighter, the past eight years as chief, and it’s no secret what he’ll miss most.

“The guys, the firefighters. And the action, the adrenaline rush,” Mr. Brown said. “These alarms are meant to wake up the soundest of sleepers, and when they go off, your heart goes to your throat. And depending on the nature of the call, it may stay there.”

All he ever wanted was to spray away the flames from atop a snorkel lift — the star of the show. He didn’t know he would also learn about critical-incident stress, divorces and politics.

“I can vividly picture hundreds of people dying. It’s like it happened this morning,” he said. “Those things don’t ever go away. People dying every way imaginable, and some dying in ways you can’t imagine.”

He emerges as a knowing 60-year-old, yet he can’t help but share his smiles and tears. Rare is the person who speaks the first thing on his mind and shares the first emotion in his heart while maintaining respect atop his profession.

Born and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Mr. Brown married a St. Joseph girl. He agreed to quit his job at the Square D in Cedar Rapids to become a firefighter here.

“I had never heard of St. Joseph. I thought she was talking about St. Louis,” he recalled. “I was raring to go — I was a born-and-bred Cardinals fan.”

Mr. Brown plays baseball in a wood-bat league against kids one-fourth his age. His career was a boyhood dream, and his retirement will be the same.

“I plan on playing a lot of baseball here in town, until such time as I can take over for Albert Pujols in St. Louis,” Mr. Brown said.

Jokes like that help offset the memories and the bad days.

“It has a layering effect, and the more you layer, the heavier it gets,” Mr. Brown said.

Firefighters grow emotional callouses and a twisted sense of humor to stay focused, he said.

“I’ve tried to soften up a little bit because I’m tired of being calloused,” he said. “... I’d turn around and do it again, except for maybe the calls that I’ve been vomited on.”

Last month, Mr. Brown promoted Travis Owens to captain. As president of the Firefighters Local 77 union, Mr. Owens is not shy with his opinions, and you could say that he has a big head in more ways than one.

So Mr. Brown presented Mr. Owens with a cartoonishly outsized fire helmet.

Mr. Brown’s predecessor might not have been able to pull off that joke.

The fire chief is by nature thrust into the middle of a triangular union-fire chief-City Hall relationship. The fire chief works for the city manager, whose interests can clash with the union, which is arguably the strongest union in city government. So does the fire chief side with his boss or his employees?

Somehow, Mr. Brown seems to have done both. He said he was never concerned with his relationship with the firefighters, “because I are one.”

“It wasn’t trouble for Jack, because the No. 1 thing for Jack was that Jack never forgot where he came from,” Mr. Owens said. “Being fire chief never went to his head, and we were right there beside him.”

Mr. Brown half-jokingly said City Manager Vince Capell “didn’t have a clue” about what it was like to be a firefighter. Mr. Capell credited Mr. Brown for increasing his appreciation of the job but also for mediating misunderstandings.

All this from a fire chief who describes himself as having “no good political sense.”

“Don’t let Jack fool you,” Mr. Capell says seriously. “He plays dumb, but he’s one of the smartest guys around. He’s very astute.”

Joe Blumberg can be reached

at joeblumberg@npgco.com.