By Brown Carpenter
The Virginian-Pilot
Copyright 2007 Landmark Communications, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
PRINCESS ANNE, Va. – For 30 years, Cappy Meredith was the city’s official “fire lady.”
Obsessed with her work since house fires are often deadly, she lecture d to civic groups and anyone else who requested her.
Fi re fatalities are preventable, she emphasized, pounding away with life-saving lessons: Get a smoke alarm. Don’t leave a stove burner unattended. Keep matches and other lighters away from children. Escape immediately , possibly by crawling on the floor, if you smell smoke.
As the city’s first supervisor of life safety education for the Virginia Beach Fire Department, Meredith took her message all over the United States as her expertise became known. Her byline has appeared occasionally in Fire Chief magazine.
“It was a high-stress job,” said Meredith, who recently retired. “Anytime there was a fire death or injury, I would take it personally and wonder what could have been done to prevent it.”
In February, Meredith was cited for “excellence in fire and life safety education” by the Virginia Department of Fire Programs.
Retirement, while not so stressful, certainly requires plenty of energy.
Her No. 1 dependent is Rita, a 30-something Appaloosa mare who dwells in a fenced yard on the Dam Neck area property Meredith shares with her husband, Joey Weinbrecht. He’s a retire d fire captain .
Meredith’s spread also includes a couple of dogs, four cats and a cockatiel. Her small brick house shares the property with a 1983 Pontiac Firebird, Jeep, Nissan SUV and two tractors.
The coupl e has a couple of ongoing projects: building on land they own just north of Cape Charles on the Eastern Shore, finishing up a hot tub on their backyard deck and a fixer-upper sailboat docked at Little Creek.
Meredith des cribed herself as a “real Virginia Beach native.”
She explained, “I was born in the old hospital at 25th Street and Arctic Avenue,” she said. “And I was in the last class that graduated from the old Virginia Beach High School in 1966.”
After graduating from what was then Madison College (now James Madison University) in Harrisonburg, she headed west.
“I went to California to seek fame and fortune,” she sai d. “I didn’t find either.”
Then to New York: “I couldn’t find it there either. I modeled clothes but wasn’t very good at it.”
Her life improved once back home. After a teaching stint at the old First Colonial Christian School, she was the first applicant for the fire department’s newly created education job and was hired in 1977.
To supplement her teaching background, Meredith went through rookie school for firefighters.
She is also proud that the Middle-Atlantic insurance agents organization once named her its Firefighter of the Year.
“I fought fires in a different way,” she said.