Friends recall firefighter as dedicated to his job

MILLERS CREEK

Gray Parsons was a chain-saw man and a small-engine guru who fought fires for the N.C. Forest Service and donated time to the Millers Creek Volunteer Fire Department.

He was "eat up with fire-department stuff," his friends recall.

Parsons, 58, who became ill and died early Sunday after driving a tanker truck to a house fire, will be buried today, with honors, as a firefighter who died in the line of duty.

Hundreds of firefighters and dozens of vehicles are expected to join his procession as it leaves Millers Creek Baptist Church beside the fire station, travels up Boone Trail Road and onto Parsonsville Road, past Benny Parsons Road, where he lived, and then on to the graveside service at Stony Hill Baptist Church cemetery.

"If Gray had to go, that's the way he'd want to go," said cousin Micky Parsons, referring to the fact that Parsons died responding to a fire.

But his friends at the forest service and the fire department said that Parsons would have enjoyed today, too, because it will be a time when so many of his brother and sister firefighters will be together.

"Gray was always the first one here in the morning and had a big smile on his face," said Micky Parsons, who also works for the forest service. "He was always ready to do something. If they said, ‘Gray, we're sending you to Alaska today,' he was ready to go."

Expert with a chain saw

Gray Parsons worked for the N.C. Department of Correction for 18 years. He also spent 10 or so years as a part-timer on the Fire Attack Support Team. The forest service calls in FAST members to battle wildland fires. On the team, Parsons was a sawyer -- an expert with a chain saw.

When a friend asked him to help teach firefighters about chain saws, Parsons rounded up chain-saw parts and mounted them on boards for a demonstration.

When he would give people directions to his home, he would tell them to turn in at the chain saw that he had mounted on a post beside his mailbox.

When a job opened up at the forest service a few years back, Parsons jumped on it. He also spent eight years in the Millers Creek Volunteer Fire Department, which has 52 members.

At both agencies, he had a reputation for being a wizard of small-engine repair. He had fixed just about everyone's lawn mower.

He was drawn to challenges. "If it was something tedious, working on it suited Gray," his friend Tommy Blackburn said yesterday at the forest service's Wilkes County headquarters. "The more aggravating, the better. That's the way he liked it. He was just an all-around good fellow. He helped everybody around here."

Blackburn knew Gray Parsons as easygoing and well-liked, and as a person who loved to talk.

"One of the hardest people to get away from you ever saw," Blackburn said, smiling.

His colleagues at the Millers Creek fire station liked his upbeat personality, his smile and optimism. He would salute when he passed someone in the hall.

"You very rarely saw him without a smile on his face," Assistant Chief Chad Wayne said.

"I don't think there was anybody that didn't like him," Wayne said. "Gray was a hero, for lack of a better word. He'll be sorely missed in this community, as well as the Parsonsville community."

On Saturday, Parsons' day off, he had worked about 12 hours at the forest-service headquarters, helping his teammate Jeff Bumgarner. The men were part of a two-person team that cleared brush and set fire lines. At fire scenes, Bumgarner would drive the bulldozer, and Parsons would be on the ground watching out for safety and doing other tasks.

"He was a brother to me," Bumgarner said.

For months, they had worked together to restore one of the trailers that the agency uses to haul a bulldozer. They had put new planks on the floorboard, wired in new lights, welded, put in new stainless-steel fittings and painted.

It's the nicest-looking bulldozer trailer in the forest service, Wilkes County Forester Jody Brady said.

Now that trailer will carry Parsons' coffin in the procession from the church.

Responded to house fire

On Saturday, Parsons knew that Bumgarner needed help in restoring another trailer so he came in on his day off. Bumgarner was painting the wheels, while Parsons was hunched over grinding something smooth.

"I hollered at him, ‘Gray, it don't have to be perfect,'" Bumgarner said. "He kept on grinding. I said, ‘Gray, did you hear me?' He looked up at me and had the biggest grin on his face and kept on grinding. That's the kind of person he was. He was a worker."

Parsons worked into Saturday night. When the Millers Creek fire department was sent to a house fire at 11:30 p.m., Parsons headed out again, picking up the tanker truck at the department's substation in Parsonsville.

The house fire was less than a quarter-mile from the forest-service headquarters where Parsons had been all day. When he started having chest pains, a passenger alerted fire officials, and an ambulance took Parsons to Wilkes Regional Medical Center. He was airlifted from there to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem.

At Baptist, Bumgarner was at Parsons' bedside, and he spoke to him in the same loud, gruff voice he had used earlier when they were working: "Gray, do you hear me?"

Bumgarner told him that they would need his help because the forest service was getting ready for an inspection.

Parsons looked at him and smiled.

He died later that morning.

■ Monte Mitchell can be reached in Wilkesboro at 336-667-5691 or at mmitchell@wsjournal.com.