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Chief Robert Stewart Retires To Battle Cancer, Spend Time With ‘Little Man’

Robert Stewart has retired after 30 years of service as a volunteer fireman in Bratt and Walnut Hill, the last 15 of those years as chief of the Walnut Hill Volunteer Fire Department. He retired to spend more time with his “Little Man” and to fight cancer.

Stewart answered his first fire call in 1967 after the formation of the Bratt Volunteer Fire Department. The Walnut Hill Ruritan Club founded the Walnut Hill Volunteer Fire Department in 1964 and donated a  truck to form the Bratt department three years later.

For 10 years, he served the Bratt community as a volunteer fireman until Bratt VFD’s truck finally “wore out”. Walnut Hill and the Atmore Fire Department began answering calls in the Bratt community in 1977.

He was out of a volunteer fire department for about 10 years, until he joined the Walnut Hill VFD in 1987. For 21 straight years, he served the Walnut Hill department. The last 15 of those years, he served as chief.

“1501 enroute”

March 9, 2001, was the beginning of what Stewart said was the most memorable call of his career.

The call was not far from Stewart’s house. It was a single vehicle accident, car versus a tree, on Highway 99 near Oakshade Road. When Stewart arrived, he and the other members of the WHVFD found a small sports car, literally cut in half,  two pieces of car on the side of the highway. Inside, the passenger was not seriously injured.

But the driver, a 16 year old local girl, was gravely injured. Her leg was partial severed, a major artery cut. Her situation was worse than serious. In fact, she coded at least twice before arriving at the hospital. “Coded”, as in “code blue”, as in cardiac arrest. But Stewart and the rest of the emergency workers that day worked hard to get this young lady on LifeFlight.

In the end, she lost her leg, but she survived. Today, she’s a healthy 23 year old, recently happily married.

“I’ve been to a lot of bad wrecks,” Stewart said. “Sometime, people die. It’s always a good call when you can help someone that doesn’t die.”

But two words made this wreck different than many for the chief.

“Thank you.”

From death’s door, the young girl was able to return to tell Stewart and the rest of the Walnut Hill Volunteer Fire Department “thank you”.

“Sometimes they come back to tell you ‘thank you’,” he said. “It makes you feel good, and you know your department has accomplished something, when they came back to thank you.”

There have been others to return to thank the department over the years. But Valerie Baker’s accident just sticks out in Stewart’s memory.

“The ‘thank you’ means a lot, especially when they came to the department and thank everyone,” he said. “It just means a lot.”

On Friday morning, NorthEscambia.com will introduce you to Valerie and take you back to the day that nearly claimed her life, and you’ll learn what she has to say about Robert Stewart and the Walnut Hill Volunteer Fire Department.

“Not a Hero”

Chief Stewart doesn’t consider himself a hero. The Walnut Hill volunteers are team, he said, with everyone working together to help the community.

He was labeled a  hero at least once. It was another wreck, this one on State Line Road. A car was upside down in a water-filled ditch with three children inside. Stewart was the first on the scene, responding from his nearby home.

“I managed to get the door open and got the three children out of the ditch,” he said. “Their mom called me a hero. I was just doing my job.”

Cat In Tree? Been there, done that. Twice.

It’s a scene that’s usually in a children’s program…the fireman rescues the cute little kitty cat from a tree. But in real life, it’s not exactly so pretty.

One cat-in-a-tree call was on Highway 97 several years ago. 1501 and his wife, Diann Stewart (a.k.a. 1503) responded to the call.

“She ran the ladder up the tree,” he said. “I knew what I was in for. I put on a bunker coat, and gloves before going up to the cat.”

“The ole cat just froze on the tree,” Stewart said with a chuckle. “I needed both hands to peel it off the tree. It stuck like Velcro on that tree. I had to keep peeling that ole cat off the tree.”

The second time Stewart responded to a cat-in-a-tree call, he was perhaps a bit smarter. He sent his son Sam Stewart, also a volunteer fireman, up the tree. This call was at the home of a local pastor. The pastor told them to drop the cat, and drop it Sam did. The can landed on a lower limb of the tree, uninjured.

Scary Stuff

“When my youngins were in school, I did not like it when you’d get a call in the direction they were suppose to be coming from,” he said. “You were always it afraid it was going to be one of yours.”

“When you live up here, you are kin to somebody,” he said. “You always care about who it is.”

A Time To Work, A Time To Play

Stewart was quick to thank all of those that have volunteered with the Walnut Hill VFD over the years. And he expressed his thanks to the other volunteer fire departments in the area the assisted Walnut Hill, as well the county deputies, state troopers and others he worked with for years.

The biggest thanks went to those Walnut Hill Volunteer Fire Department members, a group he said he always enjoyed being around.

“I had the best bunch of firemen in the county he said, “and when they were done working and got ready to play, I had the biggest bunch of youngins in the county.”

Time For Little Man

Stewart said his health and his “Little Man” led to his decision to retire. Little Man is his grandson, 14 month old Drew Kennedy, the son of Kelly and Jeff Kennedy.

When NorthEscambia.com sat down with Stewart for this interview, Little Man was in the floor with Nana (Diann), playing with a  toy John Deere tractor. He was wearing fire truck pajamas.

“Do you want Papa’s chair” Stewart asked him. Over to the chair he ran, grinning ear to ear at his Papa.

“He loves fire trucks,” Stewart said. It runs in the family.

“It was just time for me to spend more time with Little Man,” he said.

Battling Cancer

“Little Man is good medicine for me,” Stewart says as he talks about battling cancer. “It’s a nice blessing to have him at all. He goes to Pensacola with me for my treatments.”

The cancer was another factor in his choice to retire.

“It you are going to be in charge, you have to keep up with what was going on,” he said. But the cancer treatments were making him very, very tired.

He started chemotherapy in 2006. “It just had me wore out,” he said. He thought he had been cured. But the cancer returned.

Daily IV treatments began again in 2007 and continued everyday until March of 2008. But it was necessary to being treatments again in July of this year.

“I just had a bad feeling about this knot on my head this time,” he said. Turns out it was malignant, and the battle is proving to be hard.

“1501 Completed Assignment”

“It’s hard not to answer a call,” he said. The fire department pager still goes off in the Stewart home, alerting them of emergency calls. Diann remains with the Walnut Hill VFD as an EMT. “After 20 years, it’s hard not to go help someone.”

“I just always tried to help.”

Pictured top: Retired Walnut Hill Volunteer Fire Department Chief Robert Stewart and his grandson Drew (“Little Man”) Kennedy watch from the sidelines at a recent accident on Pine Barren Road. Pictured above: Stewart at last year’s Walnut Hill Volunteer Fire Department fish fry. Pictured below: Stewart makes a call as “Little Man” watches an ambulance crew work. NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.