A beloved Tacoma firefighter died from cancer he got on the job. He’s more than a stat
For Melissa Schiemer, it’s the little moments at home that are the hardest.
More than a month after her husband, Tacoma firefighter Robert “Bo” Schiemer, died of cancer, they still stop her in her tracks.
Since her husband’s Jan. 29 death, at the age of 46, Melissa Schiemer — who goes by MJ — has shouldered her own grief. She’s also watched as the Tacoma Fire Department has grappled with the loss, and honored a public servant and a friend who, by all accounts, epitomized the profession — and the selfless sacrifices firefighters make in the line of duty.
What she wasn’t prepared for — what no one can ever prepare for — was the task of explaining the loss to the children her husband left behind.
“Our youngest are having a really hard time with it. It’s constantly something that stares at them — the empty spaces. He’s not in his chair. Or he’s not where they think he should be,” Melissa Schiemer said this week, days after a public memorial was held for her husband.
“We’re taking it one breath at a time,” she continued. “As adults, we sort of accept risks … But I feel so responsible for helping them work through and navigate all of these things, because it’s not going to be just now. They’re going to miss out on dad for so much longer.”
Last Saturday, hundreds of people gathered at the Tacoma Dome Exhibition Hall to pay tribute to Bo Schiemer, whose sickness and untimely death, like so many in the dangerous profession, have been attributed to the job he performed. Occupational cancer — a result of repeated exposure to burning buildings and other synthetic plastics and chemicals — is now the leading cause of death among firefighters, according to the International Association of Fire Fighters. Schiemer, a father of four who grew up in Edgewood and attended Puyallup High School before finding his way to a profession he seemed ready-made for, is the latest to fall victim.
But for his widow and his children — two older boys from a previous marriage, and the two younger kids he shared with Melissa — Bo Schiemer was much more than a statistic It’s a sentiment shared by his many friends across the department.
Schiemer’s death doesn’t just underscore the inherent risks of firefighting, they say.
It leaves a void that can be overwhelming, because of the man who left it, and the legacy he carved out during a life cut short.
“Bo was one of those once-in-a-lifetime kind of people … the kind of person that you spend time with and you feel like you’re being passively elevated just being around them,” said Tacoma Fire Chief Tory Green. “He was just a really good-natured person, in the truest sense of the words. You don’t meet many people like that in your life, but when you do, you know those people are special.”
Matt Frank, Schiemer’s longtime partner at Fire Station 1, echoed the chief’s assessment. Over the course of five years, he spent thousands of hours working with Schiemer, taking inspiration from his colleague’s relentlessly positive attitude and the father and husband he was outside of work.
Nearly 20 years before they became Tacoma Fire Department colleagues, Schiemer and Frank attended high school together in Puyallup. After Schiemer briefly followed the family path into construction, working as a mechanic for Tucci and Sons, he joined the Tacoma Fire Department in 2011. It was a perfect fit, in Frank’s estimation. Firefighting allowed Schiemer to play to his strengths, solving problems and fixing things, whether it was the fire truck they shared or during the daily encounters they had with people in the midst of crisis.
Asked about his partner, Frank said simply: “Bo is someone who made you want to be better.”
A career isn’t all Frank and Schiemer shared. In 2015 and again in 2018, Frank was diagnosed with melanoma, with cancer eventually spreading to his lungs. After Schiemer received his initial diagnosis of stomach and esophageal cancer in 2021, they both figured he’d beat it, just as Frank had defeated the disease, he said.
On Wednesday, Frank described his fallen partner as his best friend. He last spoke to Schiemer the day before he died, but it’s the memory of their final shift together — on July 17, 2022, not long after Schiemer learned pleural cancer had taken hold of the space around his lungs, giving him months to live — that sticks with Frank.
“I remember his last time driving ladder truck one, which he loved. We backed into the station, and nobody wanted to get out. We just sat there, because we knew it was our last shift with Bo,” Frank said.
“It was an overwhelming day. The rigs rotated through from the other stations because we knew definitively that was his last shift,” Frank continued. “To give you an idea of the type of person he was, at one point I went into the kitchen, just to take a few minutes away from everybody. I heard someone walk in behind me, and it was Bo, wanting to see how I was doing.”
For Melissa Schiemer, the tributes that have poured in since her husband’s death — and the support of Tacoma Fire Department — have helped to ease the pain, she said. Knowing the impact he made in so many people’s lives and the way he persevered until the end gives her strength, even if picking up the pieces and carrying on feels like a monumental task.
She’s grateful for her memories, she said, including the heartbreaking reminders all around her. On the wall of her art studio in the family garage, there’s a lighted sign that Bo, who she described as “incredibly romantic,” gave her as a gift, acquired from the piano bar where they first met. Nearby, there’s a set of new crab pots, which Bo recently bought, certain there would be at least one more adventure in the family’s future.
Despite it all, Melissa Schiemer firmly believes her husband would “do it all again,” she said.
“To watch your best friend, who burned so brightly, fade is incredibly challenging. … I often thought about what it would be like when someone knocked on the door to tell me he wasn’t coming home from a fire. I never imagined a stop at the doctor’s office to find out he wasn’t coming home,” she said.
“But he loved his job. For Bo, it wasn’t just a job. It was like he’d won the jackpot.”
