A retired district fire chief has died, Montgomery Fire/Rescue announced Thursday.
MFR joins the family of T.L. Bryant in mourning his death while also celebrating his life. The station reports Bryant served Montgomery from October 1974 to July 1995, serving as a dispatcher, firefighter, and a paramedic over the course of his career. He was assigned as the Commander of the EMS Division in 1983 and became the first District Fire Chief of the Medic Division when the position was created in 1986. MFR said Bryant affected many firefighters through mentoring, friendship and leadership, and he is lauded for helping build the foundation of MFR’s EMS division. Bryant is said to have realized early on that EMS would continue to become a large part of the fire service industry. For comparison, MFR offered statistics: in 1986, units responded to 11,715 EMS calls; in 2018, that number tripled to 34,939.