About Author

Bill Beebe

A forester. A firefighter. A storyteller who lived every word.

Bill Beebe’s story doesn’t start in a classroom or a government office. It starts in the bottomlands of eastern Arkansas, in the river-soaked, timber-thick wilderness between the Mississippi and White Rivers. He was raised on a small, isolated farm, 12 miles from the nearest town, in a family that worked the land and lived close to nature.

When the family sold the farm and moved to a country store, the rhythm of life changed but the connection to the outdoors didn’t. When they weren’t working, Bill and his family were riding horses, hunting white-tailed deer through hardwood bottoms, fishing the slow-moving rivers of the Delta, and camping with friends who knew the same forest trails by heart.

That upbringing gave Bill something no degree could: an instinctive understanding of wildland, and a respect for what fire can do to it.

Why He Wrote This Book

Wildland firefighters today are treated as heroes. Communities post signs on the roadside. Strangers offer to buy lunch. There is a national respect for the men and women who run toward the fire. But Bill remembers when it wasn’t like that. When his crew was told to leave a diner. When they were threatened. When the very people they were risking their lives to protect were the ones making it worse.

Before We Were Heroes is his account of those years, the 1970s in Arkansas, when fighting wildland fire was a double-edged sword. One edge of the fire. One from the people. He wrote it because someone should. And because he was there.

“I want people to understand what it was like before the recognition came. Before we were heroes, we were just doing the job.”

Bill’s Journey in Wildland Fire Management

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Academic Foundation

Bill holds an Associate of Science in Mathematics and a Bachelor of Science in Forestry, majoring in Forest Science.

Career in Arkansas and Alaska

He joined the Arkansas Forestry Commission in 1972, entering a raw and dangerous fire management world. In 1981, he transferred to the Alaska Division of Forestry, where he served until his retirement in 2004.

Incident Management Leadership

Over his 32-year career, he served on Type 2 and Type 1 Incident Management Teams and a National Area Command Team, leading complex, multi-agency wildfire operations and coordinating resources under immense pressure.