It was almost 36 years ago when Mitch Ramage responded to his first fire call.
He was 15 years old when he joined his stepfather, Danny McCraney, and the rest of the Moorhead Volunteer Fire Department to help try and extinguish a blaze at the Moorhead Gospel Hall.
“Back then, it was just pulling hoses and things of that nature,” Ramage, who was voted Sunflower County’s Man of the Year in The Enterprise-Tocsin’s 2024 Best of Sunflower County contest, said. “We didn’t get to fight fires back then, that young. We were the grunts.”
Ramage was fighting fires inside of burning buildings just as soon as he was old enough to earn his volunteer firefighter certification.
“I went through volunteer certification in 1992,” he said. “I went to the fire academy before I graduated from high school…From then, we were in every house we could get into.”
For Ramage, the volunteerism has always been about public service, although he does admit that at his youngest fighting fires, there was a lot of adrenaline involved.
“Younger, it’s always the adrenaline,” Ramage said. “When you’re doing that, the adrenaline, you can’t match it… Even now, as long as I’ve been doing it, I still get that adrenaline rush, but your focus is more on what you can do for the person who is having the worst day of their life.”
Ramage says that he can recall the volunteer community rallying around his family when their home burned when he was in the second grade.
Ramage was born in Lexington, and he moved to Moorhead with his family when he was 2 years old.
“Daddy was my stepdaddy,” Ramage said affectionately about the man who helped to raise him in the small Sunflower County community.
Along with owning a gas station for decades in the town, McCraney was the fire chief like his father before him.
Ramage said that his stepfather was known throughout the community for how well he treated people, whether that was with his work with the fire department or letting someone who was down on their luck have some fuel on credit at the gas station.
“He treated people the way people should be treated,” Ramage said.
Ramage would eventually enter a career in law enforcement. He started out as a reserve deputy in 1995 and moved to dispatching two years later.
“I went to the streets in 1999,” he said.
All the while, he continued to train and volunteer as a firefighter.
Ramage worked patrol until he moved to investigations and then parole and probation cases.
His last job in law enforcement was with the Washington County Sheriff’s Department, where he served a shift supervisor until his departure back to Sunflower County.
In 2018, the Emergency Management Agency director’s position opened, and Ramage was encouraged to apply.
This was a job that McCraney, still living at the time, wanted him to pursue.
“I called, and I turned it down,” Ramage said. “That was not the right time.”
When it came back open again a short time later, Ramage’s stepfather had passed away.
“It was something that I wanted to do,” Ramage said of the EMA job. “I was kind of burned out on law enforcement, and it was time for a change. It was something my dad wanted me to do, so I took a chance.”
For the past several years, Ramage has embraced the job, although when he responds to emergencies, he’s still one of the first in line to put on turnout gear and go to work.
“I try to be that way, because I’d much rather lead by example,” Ramage said. “If people see the higher ups getting dirty, they’re more apt to get dirty. They’re more apt to work.”
Ramage said that he has a solid team in place throughout the county and that training on every type of emergency is key to success in the field.
“If you train together, you’re going to fight fires together,” he said. “You’re going to work a wreck together. It’s all going to be because you trained together…Most of the time, it runs pretty good.”
The EMA job involves a lot of fires, but Ramage is also in charge of managing other disasters like floods, tornados and straight line winds.
“Fires are the most common, but we are always in constant communication when storms are coming. We have a plan,” he said.
Ramage’s wife, Katie, is also a certified firefighter.
Her stepfather, like Ramage’s, was the fire chief for years in the town of Inverness.
“She already had a feel for it, and she enjoys it,” Ramage said.
The couple have six children between them, including a daughter, Mary Kathryn, who attends Indianola Academy.
Ramage said that their son, Ryan Eldridge, is now in the fire service.
With nearly three decades of time with the state of Mississippi, Ramage is eying retirement within the next 12 months.
Even if that happens, Ramage said that it probably will not affect his volunteer work when it comes to fighting fires.
“I don’t know that I’ll ever stop fighting fires,” Ramage said. “If I’m 90 years old, and I can grab a hose, and fight a fire, I probably will. That’s just something that I can’t let go.”
What he does hope is that more young people within the community will take a greater interest in their volunteer fire departments.
“We need younger people. Some of us are getting older,” Ramage said. “We need younger, stronger, willing people, who are willing to help their neighbors… People need to think about what if they don’t volunteer. If the volunteers run out, who’s going to answer the call?”
Ramage said that the process of fighting a fire does not all happen within a structure.
“There’s plenty of jobs to do outside as well,” he said. “It’s a group effort. Everything works together, and you have to make sure that everything works together for the greater good.”
For now, Ramage will keep fighting fires, responding to emergencies and recruiting new people to the calling.
“We’re always recruiting,” he said. “We want people that are compassionate. We need hard chargers and heavy hitters.”
