John C. Gilbert, a founding father of Key Biscayne’s fire rescue department and a former Village manager, has died. He was 72.
Mayor Joe Rasco announced Gilbert’s death at Tuesday’s Council meeting. Service arrangements were not immediately available.
“He made our fire rescue one of the best in the state, if not the country,” said former Mayor Mike Davey.
In September 2017, Gilbert oversaw evacuation of the island for Hurricane Irma, the first time the Village had done so.
Gilbert earlier led elite urban search and rescue teams into some of the nation’s most dire scenes, most notably the 2001 response to the World Trade Center site in New York. In 2012, he traded his fire hat for a suit and became the Village’s manager.
Jennifer Medina, his former chief of staff, said “I still can’t believe John is gone. It feels as though it was just yesterday that we were working side by side. He was a great mentor and even a greater friend.”
“He always made sure I received the credit I deserved. His steady presence and his trust in me shifted any bad day into a good one.”
His retirement in October 2018 was marred by a public dispute and lawsuit against the Village.
Even as the Ultra Music Festival was planning to locate to Virginia Key and new manager Andrea Agha was starting, Gilbert was in the process of filing a legal claim that his pension benefits were being curtailed. The case was eventually settled for $325,000, about half of what he had said he was owed.
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Melissa White, executive director of the Key Biscayne Community Foundation, said she heard that Gilbert had passed away on Sunday in Lake Tahoe, Nev.
“John was truly from another era. He devoted his life to saving lives and serving others, and he loved this island as if it were his own home,” White said. “He believed deeply in loyalty to his team, his administration, our residents, and our country.”
Rasco said Gilbert was the “a prime, prime person in helping us get our feet off the ground, both in the Fire Department and as a Village. A very well respected man in this community.”
Council Member Ed London called Gilbert, “a lovely, good human being.”
“Unfortunately, shortly after he retired from here, moved out to Lake Tahoe, then he started developing some problems, physical, mental problems, and deteriorated fairly quickly,” he said. “And he wound up in a nursing home passing away.”
Gilbert’s journey started in 1972 with the City of Miami Fire Department.
Tasked with building a fire department from scratch for the newly incorporated village, Gilbert started as Deputy Fire Chief. Within four years, he was elevated to Fire Chief, a role in which he transformed the fledgling department into the accredited agency it is today.
JOHN PACENTI is a correspondent of the Key Biscayne Independent. John has worked for The Associated Press, the Palm Beach Post, Daily Business Review, and WPTV-TV.
Editor-in-Chief
Tony Winton is the editor-in-chief of the Key Biscayne Independent and president of Miami Fourth Estate, Inc. He worked previously at The Associated Press for three decades winning multiple Edward R. Murrow awards. He was president of the News Media Guild, a journalism union, for 10 years. Born in Chicago, he is a graduate of Columbia University. His interests are photography and technology, sailing, cooking, and science fiction.