Biographical Information
Age: 24
Cause of Death: While trying to rescue a family in a burning house Daughetee fell through two stories and into the basement. While the fire team was attempting a rescue the house collapsed. The family made it safely out of the building before Daughetee entered trying to find them. Several other firefighters were injured during the incident.
Additional Information: Firefighter Daughetee was an active member of Highway 58 VFD for seven years. He was named “Firefighter of the Year” just one month prior to his untimely death.
Death of a firefighter
By Ashley Rowland
Chattanooga Times Free Press (Tennessee)
Copyright 2007 Chattanooga Publishing Company
HAMILTON COUNTY, Tenn. — The first things Nicole Daughetee noticed about the man she would marry were his eyes and his smile — a smile that struck her as goofy but endearing, and something she learned that he didn’t give away very often.
But Shane Daughetee gave his smile — and part of his heart — to her. And he gave the rest of his heart to being a firefighter.
“The only thing that he loved more than fighting a fire was you,” Lt. James Kirk, one of Mr. Daughetee’s fellow firefighters, told Mrs. Daughetee during her husband’s funeral on Monday.
Hundreds of mourners gathered at Bayside Baptist Church in Harrison to remember the 24-year-old, who died early Friday morning when the floor of a burning house caved in, throwing him into the basement minutes before the roof collapsed and buried him.
And what they remembered about Mr. Daughetee was his devotion to his two loves: his wife, and being a firefighter.
The Daughetees met when they worked at Winn-Dixie together years ago, but lost touch. They became a couple in 2002, when Mr. Daughetee stopped at the Two Pigs barbecue restaurant where Mrs. Daughetee worked. They married three years ago, and were “joined at the hip,” according to Mrs. Daughetee and several Highway 58 Volunteer Fire Department volunteers.
Saturday, the day after Mr. Daughetee died, marked the first time they had been apart for more than 24 hours since they started dating.
Mrs. Daughetee, 22, said her husband, who worked at a battery plant in Ooltewah, had one close call during his seven years as a firefighter, when the roof of a house collapsed as he was rushing toward it. But she didn’t think anything would ever happen to him on duty.
“We joked about it, but we never expected it,” she said.
Mr. Daughetee’s death is the first for the about 65 members of the Highway 58 Volunteer Fire Department and the third ever in Hamilton County.
The Rev. Dale Lovelady said he put the welfare of others first.
“He was a big teddy bear of a man,” said Mr. Lovelady of Hickory Valley Christian Church, who preached at the funeral. “He knew how to be sensitive, and he knew how to listen.”
Firefighters and emergency workers filled at least half of the seats in the standing-room-only Bayside Baptist Church. After the service, they lined the sidewalk and saluted as Mr. Daughetee’s casket was silently carried from the church to the firetruck that would take him to the cemetery. One firefighter said he counted 150 firetrucks, ambulances and police cars in the funeral procession.
After he was buried at New McDonald East View Cemetery, his family and firefighters ate sandwiches and cookies at the fire training hall where Mr. Daughtetee had spent many Saturday nights serving barbecue at bluegrass shows. Those shows doubled as fundraisers for Christmas presents for needy children.
“When they say he was ready to help, he was ready to help. He was one of those quiet guys you didn’t really notice until you needed him,” said Jerry Wilson, spokesman for the Highway 58 department.
Deputy Chief of Special Operations Mark Hutchings was at the fire station the day Mr. Daughetee joined the fire department. He was 17, a year too young to join without his parents’ permission, but he kept asking his parents until they let him sign up, Chief Hutchings said.
Mr. Daughetee won some of the department’s top honors: Station 2 Rookie of the Year in 2001, Station 2 First Responder of the Year in 2005, and Firefighter of the Year in 2006. Firefighters said he was a hard worker and a motivator.
“If I froze up at a door, he was the first person to grab me and push me in and say it’s going to be all right,” said Jacob St. Clair, who joined the department four years ago. Since then, he said Mr. Daughetee had become the “big brother that I never had,” coaching him through both work and personal problems.
“This place will never be the same without him,” Mr. St. Clair said.
“Even when these guys are gone,” he said, gesturing at the crowd in the fire hall, “he’s still going to be missed by the next generation. He’s got a legacy about how he did his job.”
When the Highway 58 department volunteers arrive tonight for their regular weekly training session, Chief C.R. Harris plans to tell them to leave Mr. Daughetee’s death behind them so they can concentrate on their work. But he knows they won’t forget it.
“The first guy going in a building will always have that fear of going in there because of what happened to Shane,” he said.
“It’s a reality check. We all have in our heads somewhere that it’s a dangerous job. You don’t talk about that part, but now we’ll talk about it a little more,” said Eliott Mahaffey, who was one of the firefighters who tried to rescue Mr. Daughetee from the basement.
Mr. Mahaffey said he didn’t know what Mr. Daughetee did when he wasn’t fighting fires.
“I’ve never known him doing anything else,” he said. “He reads the fire magazines. He goes to the fire station and gets on the Internet. When most people would check their e-mail, as soon as he logged on, he was looking at fire stuff.”
Mrs. Daughetee, who wore her husband’s firefighter jacket to his funeral, said Mr. Daughetee loved his fire station so much that when they bought a house last summer, he insisted that it be in his station’s district so he could continue to volunteer there.
“I couldn’t pry him away,” she said. “It was in him (to fight fires.)”
Daughtee had been honored as Highway 58 ‘Firefighter of Year’
By Greg Kaylor
Cleveland Daily Banner
HAMILTON COUNTY, Tenn. — A volunteer firefighter is dead and several of his comrades were injured battling an early morning fire just inside Hamilton County early today.
Shane Daughtee, 24, died in the fire.
Amy Maxwell, information officer for Hamilton County Emergency Services and director Don Allen said today that when firefighters arrived on the scene the house was fully involved in flames.
Full Story: Firefighter dies in blaze