John Ready wears many hats in Magee. He is a part-time employee at the Magee Volunteer Fire Department, a volunteer fire fighter, a full-time EMT with Covington County Hospital Ambulance Service, and he assists City of Magee Zoning Director Penny Aguirre with emergency management issues as they arise.
His heart, however, is in fire service. “I have a video from when I was little running around the house with my little fire hat on. I’ve been around emergency services my entire life. My mother was friends with the sheriff and the chief of the fire department in Monticello when I was very young. That’s where I grew up. All I ever knew until I was 10 or 11 was the fire department.”
He began doing some things at the Monticello Fire Department as a teenager. He took a break for a year before returning to work for the volunteer fire chief, who owned chicken houses. The chief also had another job selling fire trucks and Ready would help with that too.
Ready eventually went through the application process with the Monticello VFD, and after great anticipation, the chief informed Ready that he had received a unanimous vote of approval. “The first day getting on the fire department, that’s something I wanted my entire childhood and then out of nowhere I’m told you should come here to the station. They made it seem like I had a gift or something up there (at Monticello). They gave me the greatest gift of all, my love for the fire service,” Ready said.
He began attending courses at the Mississippi Fire Academy shortly thereafter although they were not required. “Every opportunity I got to be in school as far as fire service, I went to every class,” Ready said. He has earned Volunteer 1 and Volunteer 2, which is a certificate called Mississippi Certified Volunteer Firefighter. According to Ready, that equates to having the same training as a professional firefighter. He just doesn’t have the accreditation of a paid firefighter.
“My first week on the job in Monticello we had a major collision on the Pearl River Bridge, in the middle of the bridge with two 18 wheelers head on. A bucket truck which was involved had flipped over the side of the bridge and that gentleman was able to be rescued, cut out of the vehicle with a unit who had very little road training at that time. He was hanging precariously over the edge of a bridge where it’s 150 feet to the water. He was taken to the hospital and he survived. It was a great day.”
Ready and his wife Marsha Rowland moved from Monticello to Magee to be near her family. The couple has four young children.
He is also a licensed emergency medical technician (EMT) and sometimes wears dual hats with his role as a firefighter but only when responding to emergency situations before ambulance services arrive.
Ready has been a certified EMT nearly ten years and he says it took him almost a year to earn certification. “I will always, and I don’t say this with any offense to EMS, I will always love fire more than I love EMS. Long after my retirement age I will still attempt to be here (MVFD). I’m stuck in Magee.”
Ready is the first African American man with the Magee VFD as he was with Monticello. And he said he is treated no differently from any of his brothers in the department. “I’d like to convey that just because I’m the first doesn’t mean there has to be a last. In a world of black and white, just be the color red. We all bleed the same; we all are the same. I’ve experienced here at the station that no one is going to think of you any differently. We’re all family. We are all one brotherhood, under one roof with one common goal and that’s to help the community.
