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Sherry Smith

by Hans February 2003
photography by James Cook & Hans


Firefighting is still a man's world. 28 years after the first female firefighter in the U.S. was hired, only 2% of firefighters in the U.S. are women. The usual explanation is the extreme physical demands made of firefighters, who have to be able to lug heavy hoses, ladders and other equipment up flights of stairs, swing axes above their heads, not to mention carry bodies – all while wearing heavy, heat-resistant bunker coats and pants and breathing equipment, which can weigh up to 50 pounds. (By way of comparison, pro football players wear about 12 pounds of gear.)

But male or female, they don't come much tougher than Corporal Sherry Smith, a 10-year veteran of the Oklahoma City Fire Department who also happens to be one of the top heavyweight bodybuilders in the U.S. At 5-foot-7 and 180 pounds in the off-season, the 31 year-old Sherry has a physique that exudes power, with huge shoulders and arms (she does curls with 55-pound dumbbells) and thickly muscular legs.

Sherry - one of the firefighters who were at the scene of the bombing of Alfred P. Murrah federal building in April 1995, in which 168 people died – is one of only 17 women among Oklahoma City's 1000 firefighters. But she more than matches her male colleagues for strength. "Physically, she exceeds most guys on the job," says firefighter Dewitt Roland, one of her colleagues on Paramedic Engine Company 17.

In fact, having Sherry around quickly dispelled any prejudices her male colleagues may have had about the "weaker sex." "It's helped them," she says with her deep Oklahoma twang. "I'm no longer the token woman they have to watch out for. Now it's like, she's OK. She can hold her own. In fact, come help me!"

 

It's early in the morning on Valentine's Day, and Sherry is in the kitchen at Fire Station 17, cooking up breakfast – scrambled eggs, sausages and beans for the guys and an egg-white omelette for herself. "I used to eat right along with the boys," she says, cracking open an egg. "But I ended up looking like one of the boys!" It is the off-season for Sherry, three months after she competed in the NPC Nationals. She is wearing a navy blue Oklahoma City Fire Department t-shirt, filled out by her thickly-developed delts and traps and 16-inch arms, and cargo pants and black boots. Her long, ash-blond hair is pulled back in a loose ponytail.

When Sherry joined the fire department as a 21 year-old, she had already been working out for three years and had what she describes as a "semi-muscular" body. Growing up in Norman, just outside Oklahoma City, Sherry did a variety of sports from scuba diving to spear fishing. "I was real athletic, kinda a tomboy," she says. At the University of Oklahoma, also in Norman, where she majored in communications, she swam competitively. By the time she decided to give the fire department a go after she graduated, she had big, well-developed legs, but she quickly realized she needed significantly more upper body strength to do the job. As she started training heavier and more frequently, she discovered her potential for bodybuilding and began competing.

At the fire academy – "rookie school" to firefighters - Sherry met Toni Norman, another new female recruit who is now also a national-level bodybuilder, and the two began training together for size and strength. But the real change came a few years later, when Toni decided to enter a bodybuilding show, and enlisted the help of Darrell Terrell, a local national-level bodybuilder. Within three weeks Sherry decided to enter the show, the 1996 NPC Oklahoma, herself. "It was a lot of work to do for nothing," she laughs. At 131 pounds, Sherry won the middleweights, and Toni won the lightweights and overall. "I was thrilled," Sherry remembers.

A year later and a full 20 pounds heavier at 151, Sherry won the heavyweight and overall. In 1998 she took her first shot at national-level, placing 13th in the heavyweights at the USA, and realized she still had a long way to go. "It was a real eye-opener," she says. She went back to work, this time with a new training partner, Carri Ledford, a local bodybuilder who also later joined Sherry on the fire department and is now Sherry's roommate and best friend. Together they entered the 1999 Junior USA; Sherry took the heavyweight and overall, and Carri won the middleweights. A few months later Sherry moved up to eighth in the USA.

3Sherry was all set to do the USA again in 2000 when she tore her biceps tendon while training. Unable to compete in bodybuilding for the entire year, she decided to try something different: the Firefighter Combat Challenge, a grueling assault course for firefighters that ESPN, which televises the event, calls "the hardest two minutes in sports." Combat Challenge competitors race against the clock completing a series of five events – running up a five-story tower carrying a 45-pound roll of hose, hoisting another 45-pound hose up to the top of the tower, running back down the stairs and hammering a 160-pound steel beam five feet, pulling a hose filled with water for 75 feet and finally dragging a 175-pound "victim" 100 feet to the finish line - all while wearing full bunker gear. "It's extremely tough," Sherry says. "Every muscle in your body hurts, your lungs hurt - but once you get through it, it's the biggest rush!"

Carri and Sherry put together a relay team of five women and began training together. "We had a blast," Sherry says. What's more, with two national-level bodybuilders on the team, they were good. They broke the world record in their first competition, and won the finals in Las Vegas in November 2000, completing the course in 2 minutes and 13 seconds, faster than many of the men's teams. Unfortunately, two members of the team failed the drug test (the list of banned substances included everything from steroids to thermogenic supplements such as ephedrine) and it was stripped of its title.

The thousands of hours Sherry has spent in the gym have undoubtedly made her a better firefighter, but she also thinks that all the heavy lifting she does on the job has helped her as a competitive bodybuilder. She puts those awesome delts and traps, for example, down to lifting heavy hoses, ladders and axes while carrying a 25-pound AirPac on her back. "It's unlike anything you would do normally in the gym," she says.

In fact, Sherry says, bodybuilding is the perfect complement to her job. Sherry has her own unusual but effective schedule. She works a 24-hour shift, beginning at 7 a.m., followed by 24 hours off, and so on for six days, and then has four days off. She eats her six meals a day at the fire station, trains on her alternate days off and uses the off period as "active rest days," doing cardio or training abs or calves. She even manages to fit in some personal training as well. "It actually works out very well," she says. Of course, it gets a little harder pre-contest, with lower energy and strength levels and mood swings. "The guys have to put up with me when I get a little gripey," she laughs. "But they're used to it."

Spending so much time at the firehouse and the gym, Sherry is used to being one of the guys, but she also loves getting together with her girlfriends – several of whom are also competitive bodybuilders – and going dancing. "It's nice to be able to talk about make-up," she laughs. Of course, dressed up to go out, she stands out a mile: "I'm pretty extreme, especially for Oklahoma." She is used to the stares she gets, but is nonplussed by some of the comments people make. "People are pointing and saying, 'Are you a guy or a girl?' I'm like, 'Can you not tell? Hello?' That's the big misnomer about women's bodybuilding - that we all want to look like men. We don't - we just want to take our bodies to the extreme."

This year, Sherry is putting everything into bodybuilding as she goes all out for a pro card at the Nationals. At the Nationals in Atlanta last November, she was in the best shape of her life at 149 pounds. She couldn't believe it when she placed sixth in the heavyweights. "I was flabbergasted," she says. "I felt like I had that show." Afterwards one of the judges told her she needed more back width to create the impression of a tiny waist – something she is now working on - but also that she was "too hard," even though Beth Roberts, the heavyweight and overall winner, was rock-hard. "I don't think physique-wise they know what they want," she says.

Even if Sherry turns pro this year, however, she has no intention of giving up her job. Despite the dangers she faces daily, she just enjoys firefighting too much. "I love this job!" she says. "It would be hard for me to give it up for anything."



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