Professional or volunteer,

rookie or retiree, Peachtree City fire and rescue workers have been gathering

in remembrance of Chief Gerald Reed Jr. since his death Saturday.

Each has a story to tell. Some

may even be true. Laughter and tears mixed in equal measure in the day

rooms of the city's four fire stations, as Reed's mourners turned their

memories into legends.

Fire and Police Department

chaplain the Rev. John Weber came to Peachtree City at almost the same

time that Reed moved to town with his young family. Both men joined the

Fire Department as volunteers. And Weber told the "Deer Story."

Reed became only the second

full-time employee of the young Fire Department when he was hired to handle

fire and rescue dispatch at the first fire station, now known as Leach

Station 81 on Ga. Highway 74 at Paschall Road. The Deer Story began on

a busy morning after light snow had sent cars careening into each other

all over town.

Volunteers' radios came to

life as Reed's usually calm, professional voice, suddenly went soprano,

shouting for then-Chief M.D. "Brother" Leach or "any unit."

In the burst of words, firefighters thought they heard "deer in the

fire station."

Tom Hughey, then a volunteer,

was in the ambulance bay of the same building. He heard the call, opened

the door to the radio room, and confronted a full-size buck charging Reed,

who was on the desk trying to evade the animal's flailing hooves.

Hughey, no fool, slammed the

door, but not before he grabbed the nearest object, a telephone, and hurled

it at the frantic animal with all his considerable strength. The phone

bounced off the deer, which pulverized it before finally exiting the way

he had entered through a narrow plate glass window and across the parking

lot, threading his way among a half dozen or so parked cars.

He was never seen again, despite

the wake he left of blood and hair and glass chards. And two acutely shaken

firefighters.

Operations officer Capt. Ed

Eiswerth remarked that more than a dozen employees and several volunteers

have joined the department since Reed's illness had kept him away from

the office, but many of the tales about the chief were unknown even to

veteran firefighters.

Reed hung Sheetrock when he

wasn't dispatching rescue calls, but early on, he succumbed to the lure

of show biz and borrowed heavily to promote a popular Atlanta rock band

for a concert at the amphitheater then called McIntosh. Few members of

today's department could remember that when make-or-break time came, Reed

was broke.

The only way to repay the debt

was to sell the almost-new pickup truck he used to spend hours washing

and waxing. He must have grieved, but no one ever heard about it.

Few of today's members remember

that nighttime rescue calls requiring only a team of three were once dispatched

Volunteer EMTs left their homes and met either at the scene or at the

fire station, as directed by Reed's terse command "Come to the station"

without introduction, without explanation. They simply came, knowing that

when they got there, directions would be ready and an ambulance warming

up on the apron of the fire station.

Reed's diminutive stature and

receding hairline were the butt of jokes among his comrades, even after

he became chief in 1983. Weber recalled that Reed's boss, department founder

and first chief Leach, a son of the Old South if there ever was one, referred

to his protégé as he would to any underling: "I'll

have my boy come pick up that truck."

Inevitably, Reed was nicknamed

"Chief's boy."

When group pictures were taken,

someone could be counted on to yell, "Stand up, Chief," to which

the answer always came, "He is standing up." In a group was

the only way you were going to get Reed in a picture, noted acting Chief

Stony Lohr Sunday.

"Getting a photograph

of himself was like pulling teeth out of a chicken," he said, remembering

how the department had to cajole him to have a picture taken for the gallery

at Neely Station.

Photography was Reed's avocation,

and he developed a sensitive eye. He won a local contest so often its

sponsors finally asked him to judge it so as to spread the honors around.

Lohr, like other colleagues

of Reed, remembers him a sentimental man who frustrated those who cared

for him by keeping his needs from them. "Chief Reed was a fighter

to the end," Lohr said. "He was a very private person who would

give the shirt off his back to help his people, but who would provide

very little information concerning his own needs. The department was his

life. He loved his daughters, sailing and photography."

Volunteer Capt. Jack Rutledge

wrote messages of encouragement to the chief, relating his experiences

as a medic in combat. "As sick as he was, [he wrote] me back: 'When

the alarm sounds we set aside our personal problems, forget our differences

and pull together for someone else.'

"To me that was who Gerald

Reed was... There is no doubt I will miss him. The citizens of Peachtree

City and Fayette County have lost a true hero."

Training officer Hughey, with

22 years in the department, said: "Gerald was one of the toughest,

most honest and, in a unique way, one of the most caring individuals and

we will truly miss him."

Veteran firefighter/paramedic

Jack Routon turns to poetry to express his deepest feelings, and penned

a few lines that reflected a similar sentiment. Reed, with no degrees

or diplomas above his desk, took some heat from better-educated fire professionals.

But, wrote Routon, what Reed lacked in formal training, he made up for

Longtime firefighter/paramedic

Peki Prince was also Reed's neighbor near Sharpsburg. "My son [Kyle,

12] is now in the [Fire Department] Explorer program," she said,

"and, while he knows he has to go to college, he is starting his

career as a firefighter. It's all he's ever wanted to do. He grew up down

the road from Chief Reed and used to help him around his property. It

was hard to explain [the chief's death] to him."

Prince, like almost everyone

whose life the chief touched, remembers him coming to visit her when she

was a hospital patient herself. "He was not just the leader you respect

and you mourn he was a friend."

The responsibility of drilling

the honor guard for today's ceremonies fell to Prince. For her, it was

painful duty: "It hurts when I see the honor guard practice and know

it's for someone who was my friend."

If a reporter may be forgiven

a personal note: I was on City Council and an occasional employee

of the Fire Department myself when Gerald came to town. The bonds between

us were deep. During my daughter's long illness, he used to encourage

me to bring her to the fire station where she reigned over the guys from

her throne on the old couch in the office.

came to call, I had not had time to take her to the station. Afterward,

Gerald and I stood and stared aghast at "Alice's couch." It

was covered with chards of glass.

Only a couple of months later,

it would be Gerald's familiar voice that summoned me home from paramedic

class in Riverdale. All he said was, "She's gone."