City residents are mourning the death and celebrating the life of Deputy Fire Chief Christopher Pepler.
Pepler, 43, was a Torrington native and came to his vocation at an early age, he told The Register Citizen in a 2013 interview when he was promoted to deputy fire chief. He died Wednesday morning of cardiac arrest, and had also been battling cancer.
“My goal since I was 4 years old, in Torrington, was to be a firefighter,” Pepler said in 2013. “The fire department came to my school in kindergarten and I had my picture on the front page of the Register in 1978 squirting the hose and I said to my parents that I want to be a firefighter, no different than anybody else, only I stuck with it.”
Pepler volunteered with the Torringford Fire Department at age 15, then with the Harwinton West Side Department, and was hired by the Torrington Fire Department in 1999.