Michael Southworth.
By Sarah Vogelsong
CP Reporter
When a call comes into the fire station, a lot rides on who you’re riding with.
For Michael Southworth and Addison Spicer, two young volunteers at the Sparta Volunteer Fire Department, nothing puts their mind more at ease when heading out to the site of an accident or a blaze than knowing that their companion is backing them up.
“People know what they need to do,” Southworth said. “You don’t have to say anything to anybody. I know how his head works, and he knows how my head works.”
Spicer and Southworth are a first-class illustration of what first responders mean when they refer to the firefighters or emergency medical technicians with whom they serve as “family.” The word is anything but abstract. It describes not just the good times and sense of shared mission that unite these men and women, but also their support for each other and willingness to pull together to get a job done.
Addison Spicer.
“You’re going to have your arguments … but when you get on the truck, all of that goes away,” Southworth said. “Everyone can put their differences aside and work together.”
Although they aren’t related, listening to Spicer and Southworth interact is like watching two brothers. When Southworth forgets a detail or pauses in putting together his thoughts, Spicer jumps in to add his two cents. Southworth intervenes in a story Spicer is telling to share his friend’s nickname at the station (Spicer is called “Princess” for the way he hits a volleyball; Southworth is known alternately as “Little Skip” or, more obscurely, “Booster Seat”).
The two both grew up in Sparta, an area they love for its sense of community. But although Southworth attended Caroline High School and Spicer was homeschooled, they formed a close bond over the years.
“There’s not many days that go by that I don’t see that face right there,” Southworth said, gesturing at Spicer, who quickly shot back, “That’s not a bad thing.”
It was Southworth who brought Spicer into the fire service. For Southworth, who grew up a mile from the Sparta station and whose father has over 30 years’ experience in the department, becoming a first responder was almost inevitable.
“I literally grew up with the people in the department,” he said. So when he first began volunteering five years ago, at the age of 15, it came as a surprise to no one.
Initially, Southworth began on the fire side, riding on calls whenever he could and enrolling in fire classes while still at CHS—a double courseload that he described as not being too difficult “because it was something I really wanted to do.” After repeatedly running rescue calls, however, he found he enjoyed the work and about a year ago gained his EMT certification.
Spicer’s road to the Sparta Volunteer Fire Department was more winding. He worked for David Storke at the Storke Funeral Home in Bowling Green for several years, an experience that not only habituated him to working with bodies of the deceased but also taught him how to interact with people suffering from extreme strain and grief—lessons that later helped him as a firefighter.
After a year at Germanna Community College, Spicer devoted his energy to farming, eventually hiring on as a truck driver and combine operator with Custom Harvesting, a job that took him out to the vast cornfields of the west. But although he said he “had a blast” in the position, he wanted a more permanent occupation and came back east to get his lineman certification from North Georgia Technical College.
Back in Caroline, looking for a job, Spicer was persuaded by Southworth to join up at Sparta.
“I’m all about the less than perfect circumstance,” Spicer said, reflecting on his two primary occupations as lineman and firefighter. “I guess they wired me backwards when they made me.”
With their long friendship, the two young men fell easily into their new dynamic as colleagues, with the fire service becoming one more thing they could share. Spicer recalls his first major call: a house fire off Fortune Drive. He hadn’t yet finished his training, and when the squad arrived, the building was already filled with smoke.
“All I remember was seeing Michael’s light in front of me,” he said.
The reality of first response work, both said, is dramatically different from what can be studied through books and videos.
“Classes prepare you, but they only prepare you so much,” Southworth said.
Still, neither young man said that he feels fear in going out on a call—as adrenaline rises, training kicks in and the focus narrows to providing aid to those in need.
“It feels good to help people, to know that we were there and we tried to do what we could,” Spicer said.
That satisfaction helps Southworth and Spicer get through some long nights and calls at strange hours. As volunteers, each has to balance his regular job with his responsibilities at the station. Spicer today works his dream job as a lineman with the Rappahannock Electric Cooperative, while Southworth drives an ambulance for LifeCare, logging an estimated 1,000 miles a week transporting patients around Virginia. Nevertheless, Southworth hopes to make a career out of emergency response and said he’d particularly like to be hired in Caroline one day.
Beyond work and the fire station, there’s not a lot of time left over, but in their spare hours, both Spicer and Southworth enjoy hunting and fishing—although, thinking about those activities, Spicer immediately begins to laugh.
“Nine times out of 10,” he said, “we still end up fishing at the creek by the station.”
Safety tip
Spicer and Southworth recommend that drivers in Caroline be particularly careful in navigating the curvy and tree-lined back roads of the county, where many accidents occur. Drivers, they say, often don’t pay enough attention or stay on their side of the road, and coming around a corner on the heels of slow-moving farm equipment can prove disastrous.