Zane Sparling
oregonlive.com
ST. PAUL, Ore. — On the podium stood a football, a Buckaroo’s letterman’s jacket, a pile of piney Cascade hops — and an empty fireman’s uniform.
Those were the emblems of Austin Garrett Smith, a 30-year-old volunteer firefighter who died in the line of duty in rural Marion County on Feb. 3. Thousands gathered Saturday at the St. Paul Rodeo stadium to mourn the fallen firefighter — and to recall with a laugh his famous one-liners, just as Smith would have wanted.
“If he died in the line of duty, Austin wanted a big party with lots of beer. I think it’s safe to say we’ve accomplished that,” said Reed Godfrey, a firefighter/paramedic who served alongside Smith in the St. Paul Fire District. “To know Austin was to love him.”
The cause of the fatal fire is still under investigation, but officials say Smith was taking up defensive operations outside a burning building at a poultry farm when something inside the barn suddenly exploded.
The blast ripped through the tight-knit community.
His family has farmed hops for six generations in the St. Paul area – winning the coveted Cascade Cup again this year — that sat on stage on Saturday – but it was Smith who first began to brew with them, initially just concocting beers with friends in a garage.
He loved St. Paul and wanted to make it even better. His budding plans for a new venture, the Hop Harvest Taphouse, hadn’t yet come to fruition.
A lifelong Oregonian, Smith attended school at the St. Paul School District and became a four-sport athlete his senior year, though football was his passion. As a lineman and kicker for the Buckaroos, Smith battled for the pigskin in the same stadium where he met his wife, Ashley, years later, in the rodeo bullpen.
“He searched a long time for you, Ashley,” said Kimme Bothwell, Smith’s close friend and neighbor growing up, recalling the 600-person wedding that was held for the couple in October 2018.
Smith had a fondness for water and watercraft, Bothwell added — so much so that no one knows for sure how many boats he owned — but his true home was in the fields of his family farm. Around town, most people knew Smith by his nickname, Aussie.
“There’s something to be said about a man who dedicates his life to caring for a crop,” Bothwell said. “It takes calloused hands and a tender heart, and that was Aussie to a tee.”
Smith joined the volunteer department in 2015, thinking nothing of rolling out of bed in the middle of the night to protect his community, said firefighter Todd Koch, who sat beside him on Engine 756 after the alarm went out around 4 a.m. Feb. 3.
“We do it for the love of our town and the people that it holds,” said Koch. “He will leave a void that will be hard to fill.”
As the memorial for Smith concluded, a LifeFlight helicopter buzzed through the clear blue sky, bagpipes and drums blared, and an honor guard gently carried an urn off stage.
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