Jonesboro, AR – (JonesboroRightNow.com) – Jan. 30, 2025 – The Jonesboro Fire Department celebrated the retirement of two battalion chiefs after they’d each completed 33 years of service.
The reception honored JFD Battalion Chief Brett Winstead and JFD Battalion Chief Tim Rowell. It was held Wednesday afternoon in the engine bay of Jonesboro Fire Station 2.
During a brief ceremony, JFD Fire Chief Martin Hamrick thanked the men for their service to the department.
“These two guys have really taught me personally a lot because I haven’t come up through the department,” Hamrick said. “They will definitely be missed here.”
According to the pair, they started together 33 years ago and had always said they were going to retire together.
“He started in August of ’91, and I started in February of ’92,” Rowell said. “So, he’s really got 33 and a half [years.]”
Winstead also noted that firefighting is not something one can do forever, however, he said that they did see a lot of changes over the years.
“Just the changes that’s happened in our career,” Winstead said. “When we were hired on, Jonesboro was about 35,000 to 40,000 people. The City has grown. The department has grown. When we hired on, we were the first ones to break 1,000 runs and we thought, ‘Oh my gosh that’s hilarious.’ Well, this year we broke over 10,000 runs.”
A run is a fire department’s response to an incident.
“We have seen a lot of change, so much change,” Winstead said. “We were two-man engine companies and there were only six stations and one of those that just was barely open. We fought a lot of battles and won pretty much all of them.”