photo provided

Battalion Chief Stephen J. Leslie  worked for the Summerville Fire Department for 37 years, 11 months and 11 days.

photo by Billy Schimpf

Leslie was among the responders to the flea market fire in the mid-1990s.

photo provided

Battalion Chief Stephen J. Leslie worked his last shift for the Summerville Fire Department last week, bringing to a close a long, honorable, and successful career.

After 37 years, 11 months and 11 days, he is very pleased and still pleasantly surprised at the way things turned out for him.

Leslie, like so many kids fresh out of school, didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life, he said.  While he had spent some time in the SFD Explorers Post, he had not thought about applying with the department, he said.

Then one day in 1973, not too long after he graduated high school, fate, or more specifically, Summerville Fire Chief Ricky Waring, lent a hand.

“I just came by the station after a dentist appointment for a cup of coffee,” Leslie said. “Chief Waring started chatting with me, asked me what I was doing and finally asked if I had ever thought about being a fireman.”

As it turned out, Waring had just hired another former explorer, Steve Caldwell, that morning. He encouraged Leslie to apply and introduced him to the appropriate people with the town of Summerville. Before Leslie knew it, he was on the job.

Leslie soon found that he greatly enjoyed the work.

“I decided at some point it’s better to work a place you like, even if the money isn’t huge,” he said. “Here, I might not make as much, but I felt like I could contribute more to the community. And I’ve really liked everything I’ve done, every aspect. I wouldn’t change anything.”

Chief Marc Melfi had high praise for Leslie.

“He has been a valuable, knowledgeable, dedicated member of this department and we will certainly miss him,” Melfi said. “I’ve had the pleasure of working with him for many years. I’ve worked under him, with him, and now as his chief, and he has always been very helpful, hard-working, great to work with on all sides of the spectrum.”

Melfi said Leslie’s knowledge and experience is deep, especially in the areas of accident victim extrications and animal rescues.

In fact, he was one of the first Lowcountry firefighters to be trained and certified in extrications.

Animal rescue is an area Leslie sort of fell into, he said, but it is an area he does enjoy, he said. From raccoons to rattlesnakes, Leslie has dealt with it all.

“We’ve caught all kinds of things,” he said. “Lots of times, people will just call up and say, ‘I’ve got a snake in my yard.’ Usually, it would turn out to be a little grass snake. But one time, it turned out to be a great big diamond back rattler. The wildlife people couldn’t believe we caught one this far up here.”

When Leslie started, the Summerville Fire Department only had a few full-time firefighters, one station, and a huge territory to cover and they ran maybe 300 calls a year, he said. These days, the department, like the town, has grown; since Jan. 1, 2010, SFD has run more than 4,000 calls.

When he first started, the department was professional and dedicated, but maybe a little less formal, he said. Leslie said he remembers the department sharing a telephone line with the jail in the early days of his career. And down time around both places could be slow – which often sparked creative practical jokes on each other.

Once, Leslie had just returned from an animal call – a snake, no less – when another fire fighter came up to Leslie’s truck to ask him what kind of snake it was.

“I had an old brown and black belt sitting next to me, so I picked it up and threw it out the window at him and said, ‘why don’t you tell me,” Leslie chuckled. “You never saw somebody move so fast to get away.”

Leslie said he would recommend the fire service to anyone. He suggests new candidates get more education – colleges now offer fire service degrees – and just as important, he suggests they keep physically fit.

He said he will definitely miss the job, especially the camaraderie around the station, but acknowledges he will probably come around.

“I’m sure I’ll come in and drink coffee in the morning,” he said.

But first, he plans to spend some time around home with his wife, Lisa Reeves Leslie --who former Journal Scene staffer and columnist Julie Smith introduced to him in 2004 – and son Zach.

 “I told my wife I’d be a house husband for awhile – at least until she runs out of things for me to do.”

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