Franklin has named the street of the city’s new fire station in honor of the department’s first Black firefighter, John Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald was hired in 1972, and the station’s address will be 1972 John Fitzgerald Dr. in honor of his hiring date. He joined the department at the urging of his brother, who was a Franklin police officer.

The street sign was unveiled Friday in an event Fitzgerald attended. He said it was “overwhelming and awesome” to have a street named in his honor.

“I am so forever grateful,” he said.

Fitzgerald was raised on Church Street in downtown Franklin and attended Natchez High School, where Black children were forced to go because of segregation. In 1967 during his junior year, the school closed because of integration.

To get the job, he showed up at Fire Chief Johnny Smith’s house and made his case. Two weeks later, he started.

“He took a chance on a 21-year-old kid,” Fitzgerald said.

When he began his career with the department, he was one of only nine firefighters. In those days, firefighters answered the phones and dispatched emergency calls. Over the course of three decades, Fitzgerald worked his way through nearly every position in the department before earning the title of assistant chief.

He was nicknamed “Daddy Man” because so many in the department viewed Fitzgerald as a father figure. He was named Fireman of the Year for the city in 1987.

New station erected years after fatal explosion

Fire Station 7, located in Berry Farms, comes after the 2014 fatal gasoline tanker explosion destroyed the Goose Creek Bypass-Peytonsville Road bridge. The explosion occurred when the tanker truck slammed into the bridge, killing its driver and sending flames hundreds of feet in the air.

A temporary station was erected in the years since the explosion to better serve southeastern Franklin.

Originally published in The Tennessean 

By Brinley Hineman