Firefighting family affair for new Tenn. recruit

By Matt Lakin
Knoxville News-Sentinel

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Melody Neubert never had to look far to know what she wanted to do with her life.

She learned it all watching her mother, Master Firefighter Vicky Hill. "I grew up at the fire hall," Neubert said. "They're like my second family. I've wanted to do this since I got out of high school."

Neubert, 30, joined her mother in the firefighting ranks Monday night when she and 29 other Knoxville Fire Training Academy recruits graduated during a ceremony at the city Convention Center. Mother and daughter make up the only mother-daughter firefighting pair in the city's history, fire officials said.

"These are the only ones I've ever heard of," Knoxville Fire Department Capt. Darrell Whitaker said. "They're certainly the first in Knoxville, and possibly the only one in the state." Neubert didn't set out to make history. She just wanted to be like her mom.

"I started really thinking seriously

about it right out of high school," she said. "For a while I thought I'd be a stay-at-home mom, but I'm not. Growing up watching my mom, I wanted to be part of saving people's lives and their homes."

Hill joined KFD 17 years ago, a few years after the department started accepting female recruits in 1988. She said she's proud of her daughter, even though she didn't expect her to follow her footsteps this closely.

"She's always been a tomboy," Hill said. "I'm going to be scared for her when she's on duty, but this is what she wants to do. She's already bragging she can put out a fire better than me. I told her I could cook better."

Mother and daughter won't serve together. Hill will stay at the Chapman Highway station in South Knoxville, while Neubert will join the crew at the Essary Road fire hall in Fountain City.

Neubert remembers sharing supper at the fire hall, where her mother drives one of the fire engines. She remembers hearing stories about each day's calls and seeing the gratitude on residents' faces when they met her mother outside work.

She also remembers the nervous nights spent at home while her mother worked the firefighter's 24-hour shift.

"It was fun but scary at the same time," Neubert said. "You didn't know when you'd get the phone call that something had happened to her."

Now a mother of two boys, the thought of those nights initially made Neubert hesitate.

"The thought went through my mind when I went into the house at the training center that I've got two kids at home," she said. "But anybody can get hurt doing their job, even driving to work and back. I just tell the boys that I'm trained very well and that God will be with me and keep me from getting hurt."

Her sons, 5-year-old Dylan and 4-year-old Brady, have asked a few times about the job's danger. But they've also told her they can't wait to hold the hose themselves.

"They say they're going to be firefighters when they grow up," Neubert said. "At least that's what they say now."

That's fine with her, and she expects she and her mother won't be the department's only mother-daughter pair for long.

"I think there'll be a whole lot more women coming into the field, and I think there will be more daughters following them," Neubert said. "Hopefully the Lord will be on my side, and he'll be with me every time I go into a burning building. He'll be with both of us."