Wordekemper answers call to public service

Above: Sen. Dave Wordekemper’s 1-year-old granddaughter Calynn tries out his gear during a visit to the Fremont Fire Station.

There’s a well-worn cliche about the large volume of information that newly elected senators face, and one that Fremont Sen. Dave Wordekemper has heard often in his first week at the State Capitol.

“Does it feel like you’re drinking from a fire hose?”

Wordekemper — “Woody” to family and friends — has been a firefighter and paramedic his entire adult life, and as he begins a new role as a freshman lawmaker the question has become a running joke.

“I can’t tell you how many times people have said that to me,” he laughs. “First, I don’t advise it. If you knew the stuff that grows in a fire hose, you wouldn’t drink from it.”

While there is much to learn about the Legislature and his part in the policy-making process, Wordekemper isn’t easily overwhelmed. You learn quickly in the helping professions that you never know what the next call will bring, he said, so you just take life as it comes.

“Every alarm is a new situation that you haven’t encountered before, no matter how long you’ve been on the job,” Wordekemper said. “You learn not to take things for granted and it puts life into perspective; you deal with whatever it is and you move on.”

The District 15 senator has been the person people call for help since he was old enough to follow one of his five older brothers into a position as a volunteer firefighter in West Point, where he was born and raised. After four years as a volunteer, Wordekemper had found his calling.

“The ability to help someone who is in the worst situation of their life just struck a chord with me,” he said. The result was a three-decade-long career with the Fremont Fire Department that will end with his retirement in early February.

At 59, Wordekemper said, the job started to take a physical toll and he “just knew it was time.” But, as someone who has been on the go all his life — either at work or hunting, fishing and camping in his off hours — the question quickly became: what’s next?

The answer was to find a way to continue to serve his community. But, Wordekemper said, his wife Barb, herself a busy RN health coach in Fremont, had a few ground rules.

As a firefighter and paramedic, you have to answer the call when the alarm sounds, he said. Someone’s life could depend on it. But as a state senator, his wife told him, some calls that come during dinner can go to voicemail.

“She knows that when I do anything, I give it my whole heart,” Wordekemper laughed. “So, she laid down the law a little bit.”

Wordekemper knows that his new role as a state senator also will involve long hours and time away from the people he loves most – including two granddaughters, the youngest born just weeks before he was sworn into office. But that’s just how he’s built.

“Community service is what I know,” Wordekemper said.