GASTONIA, N.C. — This week, Gastonia firefighters are recognizing one of their own who died while helping others decades ago.
John Stepp not only put out fires, but he also helped start local rescue squads. Even the fire station on Armstrong Park Road is one of the tributes to Stepp’s legacy, because it bears his name.
Flipp Dow has a wall of memories, and it’s hard to miss the memorial plaque to Stepp near the top. He died 45 years ago this week.
“He was like a second daddy to me and my brothers,” Dow told Channel 9′s Ken Lemon on Friday.
Stepp rose to the rank of lieutenant in the Gastonia Fire Department. Dow said Stepp worked hand in hand with his father and taught him everything he learned about being a first responder.
“He was the biggest thing going,” Dow said.
Dow told Lemon Stepp helped to start the Gaston Life Saving Crew, one of the first rescue squads in the state. People in other cities asked him to help them do the same.
“Kings Mountain, Mt. Holly, Charlotte; everybody wanted one,” Dow said.
Stepp was more than willing to help while volunteering at his own squad and working as a full-time firefighter.
“I know he told me one time the doctors told him he had to slow down,” Dow said.
Dow said Stepp wouldn’t stop answering calls for help. On Feb. 13, 1980, he responded to a house fire, but he had a heart attack while talking to witnesses at the scene, and he died.
Twenty-seven years later, the city named a new department in his honor.
“Every time I ride by there, I just well up a little bit with a sense of pride and a sense of gratefulness,” Kevin Stepp, John’s cousin, told Lemon.
This may not be the only thing that bears his name. Dow says Stepp helped to deliver hundreds of babies, and many grateful parents named their sons, “John.”
(VIDEO: ‘It’s a long drop’: Firefighter details high-angle rescue in Indian Land)
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