Jesse Daniel Clingenpeel always wanted to be a soldier. He dressed in camouflage every Halloween and imitated his father’s buzz cut as a child.
But a year after a combat injury led to his honorable discharge from the Army in 2012, the Roanoke County native eagerly joined up as a Roanoke firefighter-EMT, Chief David Hoback said.
“Even after he suffered those injuries in his deployment, he did not want to stop serving his community,” Hoback said.
The department is grieving the 25-year-old firefighter-EMT’s loss after he was killed Thursday when he struck a vehicle with his Jeep in the 4700 block of Brambleton Avenue near Ranchcrest Drive about 6:50 a.m. He was on his way to work at Roanoke Fire-Station 4 on Peters Creek Road Southwest. Clingenpeel, who enlisted in the Army in 2007 at 17, had served for seven months as a paratrooper in Afghanistan when an improvised explosive device detonation broke his right leg and shattered his left heel in September 2009. He was later awarded a Purple Heart.
“He had to go into intense therapy. He came to work for us and he’s done a phenomenal job,” Hoback said.
Hoback said Clingenpeel often leaped to take on challenges. A year after he was hired, Clingenpeel enrolled in the advanced EMS course the department requires of all employees but usually recommends for workers in their third year, Hoback said.