The Fayette Citizen-News Page

Wednesday, December 13, 2000

Friends, colleagues remember Chief Reed: 'Deer in the fire station!'

By SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
sallies@juno.com

Professional or volunteer, rookie or retiree, Peachtree City fire and rescue workers have been gathering in remembrance of Chief Gerald Reed Jr. since his death Saturday.

Each has a story to tell. Some may even be true. Laughter and tears mixed in equal measure in the day rooms of the city's four fire stations, as Reed's mourners turned their memories into legends.

Fire and Police Department chaplain the Rev. John Weber came to Peachtree City at almost the same time that Reed moved to town with his young family. Both men joined the Fire Department as volunteers. And Weber told the "Deer Story."

Reed became only the second full-time employee of the young Fire Department when he was hired to handle fire and rescue dispatch at the first fire station, now known as Leach Station 81 on Ga. Highway 74 at Paschall Road. The Deer Story began on a busy morning after light snow had sent cars careening into each other all over town.

Volunteers' radios came to life as Reed's usually calm, professional voice, suddenly went soprano, shouting for then-Chief M.D. "Brother" Leach or "any unit." In the burst of words, firefighters thought they heard "deer in the fire station."

Tom Hughey, then a volunteer, was in the ambulance bay of the same building. He heard the call, opened the door to the radio room, and confronted a full-size buck charging Reed, who was on the desk trying to evade the animal's flailing hooves.

Hughey, no fool, slammed the door, but not before he grabbed the nearest object, a telephone, and hurled it at the frantic animal with all his considerable strength. The phone bounced off the deer, which pulverized it before finally exiting the way he had entered through a narrow plate glass window and across the parking lot, threading his way among a half dozen or so parked cars.

He was never seen again, despite the wake he left of blood and hair and glass chards. And two acutely shaken firefighters.

Operations officer Capt. Ed Eiswerth remarked that more than a dozen employees and several volunteers have joined the department since Reed's illness had kept him away from the office, but many of the tales about the chief were unknown even to veteran firefighters.

Reed hung Sheetrock when he wasn't dispatching rescue calls, but early on, he succumbed to the lure of show biz and borrowed heavily to promote a popular Atlanta rock band for a concert at the amphitheater then called McIntosh. Few members of today's department could remember that when make-or-break time came, Reed was broke.

The only way to repay the debt was to sell the almost-new pickup truck he used to spend hours washing and waxing. He must have grieved, but no one ever heard about it.

Few of today's members remember that nighttime rescue calls requiring only a team of three were once dispatched by telephone to avoid waking the entire department with a radio call. Volunteer EMTs left their homes and met either at the scene or at the fire station, as directed by Reed's terse command "Come to the station" without introduction, without explanation. They simply came, knowing that when they got there, directions would be ready and an ambulance warming up on the apron of the fire station.

Reed's diminutive stature and receding hairline were the butt of jokes among his comrades, even after he became chief in 1983. Weber recalled that Reed's boss, department founder and first chief Leach, a son of the Old South if there ever was one, referred to his protégé as he would to any underling: "I'll have my boy come pick up that truck."

Inevitably, Reed was nicknamed "Chief's boy."

When group pictures were taken, someone could be counted on to yell, "Stand up, Chief," to which the answer always came, "He is standing up." In a group was the only way you were going to get Reed in a picture, noted acting Chief Stony Lohr Sunday.

"Getting a photograph of himself was like pulling teeth out of a chicken," he said, remembering how the department had to cajole him to have a picture taken for the gallery at Neely Station.

Photography was Reed's avocation, and he developed a sensitive eye. He won a local contest so often its sponsors finally asked him to judge it so as to spread the honors around.

Lohr, like other colleagues of Reed, remembers him a sentimental man who frustrated those who cared for him by keeping his needs from them. "Chief Reed was a fighter to the end," Lohr said. "He was a very private person who would give the shirt off his back to help his people, but who would provide very little information concerning his own needs. The department was his life. He loved his daughters, sailing and photography."

Volunteer Capt. Jack Rutledge wrote messages of encouragement to the chief, relating his experiences as a medic in combat. "As sick as he was, [he wrote] me back: 'When the alarm sounds we set aside our personal problems, forget our differences and pull together for someone else.'

"To me that was who Gerald Reed was... There is no doubt I will miss him. The citizens of Peachtree City and Fayette County have lost a true hero."

Training officer Hughey, with 22 years in the department, said: "Gerald was one of the toughest, most honest and, in a unique way, one of the most caring individuals and we will truly miss him."

Veteran firefighter/paramedic Jack Routon turns to poetry to express his deepest feelings, and penned a few lines that reflected a similar sentiment. Reed, with no degrees or diplomas above his desk, took some heat from better-educated fire professionals. But, wrote Routon, what Reed lacked in formal training, he made up for by running the department with love, often masked by a gruff mien.

Longtime firefighter/paramedic Peki Prince was also Reed's neighbor near Sharpsburg. "My son [Kyle, 12] is now in the [Fire Department] Explorer program," she said, "and, while he knows he has to go to college, he is starting his career as a firefighter. It's all he's ever wanted to do. He grew up down the road from Chief Reed and used to help him around his property. It was hard to explain [the chief's death] to him."

Prince, like almost everyone whose life the chief touched, remembers him coming to visit her when she was a hospital patient herself. "He was not just the leader you respect and you mourn he was a friend."

The responsibility of drilling the honor guard for today's ceremonies fell to Prince. For her, it was painful duty: "It hurts when I see the honor guard practice and know it's for someone who was my friend."

If a reporter may be forgiven a personal note: I was on City Council and an occasional employee of the Fire Department myself when Gerald came to town. The bonds between us were deep. During my daughter's long illness, he used to encourage me to bring her to the fire station where she reigned over the guys from her throne on the old couch in the office.

By chance, the day the deer came to call, I had not had time to take her to the station. Afterward, Gerald and I stood and stared aghast at "Alice's couch." It was covered with chards of glass.

Only a couple of months later, it would be Gerald's familiar voice that summoned me home from paramedic class in Riverdale. All he said was, "She's gone."