Mount Pleasant Magazine March/April 2018

57 www.ILoveMountPleasant.com | www.BestOfMP.com | www.MountPleasantMagazine.com feature Pleasant Fire Department has known since 2006, will retire a few days before his 61st birthday, leaving behind a legacy of hard work, deft leadership and an innate ability to adapt to the needs of one of the fastest growing towns in America. Many young boys dream of one day becoming a fireman – Williams did not. He grew up in rural Bennettsville, raised by a single mom in a house without running water or central heat or air and sharing a bedroom with his three brothers. His grandfather was a sharecropper, scratching out a living by growing tobacco, cotton and cucumbers. Williams learned early on, however, that starting out in relative poverty is no reason to accept things as they are – that a poor, African- American kid can rise to a position of authority in a predominantly white Southern town. “I was taught by my mom and my grandparents to work hard and not to make excuses,” said Williams. “You can succeed if you prepare yourself, treat people with respect and do what’s right. If you work hard and keep God first, there’s nothing you can’t do.” “I don’t have my head in the sand. I know that everybody isn’t treated right,” he added. “But that hasn’t been the situation in Mount Pleasant.” When Williams entered the working world, he didn’t stray far from home at first, punching a time clock in a textile mill in nearby Society Hill. Looking for a fresh start in life, he and his now ex-wife packed up and moved to the Charleston area in 1985. He worked for a while on a Department of Transportation road crew, but, seeing no room for advancement, he applied for a job with the Mount Pleasant Fire Department, despite knowing next to nothing about fighting fires. “I was so raw that I didn’t know a fire truck carried water,” he said. “But I needed a job to pay the bills.” Williams never had to apply for another job. And as he worked his way up the ladder in the fire department – as a firefighter, driver, station captain, training officer and assistant chief before being named chief in 2006 – he never considered the possibility that the color of his skin made any difference at all to the men and women he served with or to the residents of Mount Pleasant. “Color has never been an issue. I’ve always been treated with respect. People don’t see me as an African-American. They see me as the fire chief,” he said. “You should never let color, race or gender be an excuse for not being successful.” Much has changed in the Mount Pleasant Fire Department since Williams was hired as a firefighter on Aug. 16, 1986, in part because of the town’s meteoric growth but also as a result of the vision of the town’s leaders. Mount Pleasant now has seven fire stations instead of three, and, at 122, nearly triple the staff. The department has five fire engines, plus a rescue truck with sophisticated equipment that helps firefighters deal with issues such as collapsed buildings or the need to extricate a person from a hodgepodge of plastic, glass and steel that was once an automobile. Fire Chief Herbert Williams, flanked by firefighters Brian Tuohy, left, and Nick Norris.