At age 15, Amherst County Public Safety Director Sam Bryant responded to his first of countless emergency services calls, a motor vehicle crash on U.S. 60.
Almost 40 years later, Bryant has announced he is retiring from the public safety director position he has held since spring 2018, effective Sept. 1.
“It’s always tough but it’s time,” Bryant said of the decision to retire.
Bryant succeeded Gary Roakes, the previous director who held the position for 13 years, and was deputy director of Amherst County Public Safety since September 2014.
Bryant began his public safety career in 1983 as a volunteer with the Amherst Life Saving Crew and since has served as a flight medic in the U.S. Army, an emergency medical services captain with the Lynchburg Fire Department, a security specialist with the FBI and a flight paramedic with Centra Health.
People are also reading…
He cherishes the bond with fellow public safety and EMS volunteers. He said they put in long hours fielding calls and praised the service they provide on a daily basis.
“And everyone looks out for each other,” he said of the close-knit department. “…They’re one of the greatest groups of people I worked with. I’ll miss each one individually. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be around. I’ll just find another capacity to serve and spend time with my family and do fun things.”
On Sept. 11, 2001, Bryant was working for the Lynchburg Fire Department and part-time as a flight paramedic for Virginia State Police. He was in the Washington, D.C. Army National Guard and was alerted to go straight to the Pentagon in response to the terrorist attacks. He arrived at 1 p.m. and stayed three weeks helping in the response and recovery phase.
In a previous interview he recalled the shock of seeing destruction at the Pentagon, having been there before as a child growing up in Northern Virginia.
“It hurt my heart,” Bryant said of what he witnessed in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. “But I worked through it. That’s what we do. I’d do it again.”
Bryant recalls moving to the Lynchburg area from northern Virginia as a child.
“I was kind of bored and the volunteer rescue squad was within the limits of my bicycle, so I started out by that, washing trucks and being a junior member and just had a sense of service,” Bryant said.
The service took him far to a variety of roles in fire and EMS to eventually leading the department he first volunteered for as a teenager.
“You have to love it,” Bryant said. “You have to love taking care of people and being in service for them and knowing what this uniform means and why you wear it.”
Bryant said he would like to see the county try hard to become the best EMS system in the Lynchburg area. County Administrator Dean Rodgers recently publicly thanked Bryant for his dedication and strides made in the department since his tenure.
“The long hours, the personal sacrifice and just stepping in when it’s time to step in, he’s taken us a great distance, I think, in establishing accountability and more structure than we’ve had before and we now need to continue that journey,” Rodgers said.
