A Wilson native is headed to the coast after recently being named the fire chief in Elizabeth City.
While Corey Mercer has spent the last 24 years rising through the ranks of the Rocky Mount Fire Department, his career in the fire service was spurred while playing football at Fike High School.
“Some of my football buddies and I all wanted to be firefighters because one of our teammates’ dads was a firefighter named Leroy Barnes,” Mercer recalled. “He’d give us rides home from practice, he’d come to our games and he was someone we really admired and respected.”
After graduation, though, Mercer headed into the U.S. Army where he worked in field artillery during Desert Storm. At age 21, he returned to eastern North Carolina and Barnes, a Wilson deputy fire chief, helped Mercer start a career in the fire service. In 1994, Mercer joined the Rocky Mount Fire Department and in 1999, the flood brought on by Hurricane Floyd devastated his work and home communities.