A fallen fireman is being honored more than 45 years following his death.
Joe Thomas Sowell will be one of eight firefighters who died in the line of duty inducted by the N.C. Fallen Fallen Firefighters Foundation at its 11th annual memorial service in Raleigh on Saturday.
Sowell was only 38 eight years old when he suffered a major heart attack at the wheel of a pumper after returning from a midday fire on Buttercup Drive on May 14, 1969, according to an old Daily Journal article. He later died at Hamlet Hospital.
“I’ve never forgotten that day,” said Sowell’s widow, Peggy Harrington, who was a nursing instructor at the time. “You don’t forget stuff like that. It sticks with you.”
The article goes on to read that Sowell was “said to have been the spirit of the department, along with his cooking duties for the socials which he always seemed to take pride.”
According to his obituary, Sowell was born in Hamlet in 1930, was an employee of the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad, a Korean War veteran and a member and past master of the Hamlet Masonic Lodge.
Then-Fire Chief Charles Utter told the Daily Journal that Sowell would “always be remembered by his colleagues as a fireman that never failed in his call to duty.”
Harrington said her late husband would sometimes leave his job at the railroad to go to the fire station if he felt that’s where he needed to be.
“He was that dedicated to the fire department,” she said.
Current Chief Calvin White said that Sowell’s death was not considered a line-of-duty death at the time, but qualifies by today’s standards.