By: Ellen Cohen
Douglas Spencer successfully balances a full time job with his family and volunteer work in Oglethorpe County. He is the president of Oglethorpe County’s Firefighter’s Association, which is entirely volunteer based.
“I’m very proud to be able to have the opportunity to do this. This is my home. This is where I was born and raised. It’s where I’ve started my own family, and I feel like we need to take care of each other. That’s why we’re here,” says Douglass Spencer.
Spencer says he was first inspired to get involved with volunteer work in Oglethorpe because of his family history. His mother was a volunteer first aid and CPR instructor when the county had a volunteer ambulance service.
“I found out after I got into this that that’s why mother knew how to fix all the boo boos when we were kids. I just thought that’s what mothers do,” says Spencer.
Spencer says he is able to balance his full-time job with the U.S. Department of Energy with all his volunteer work because most of the fire calls happen at nights and on weekends. Volunteering is a family trait. Douglas Spencer’s wife, Nicole, volunteers for the fire department with him.
“I don’t do it for a pat on the back. I just do it because I love it. I love helping people,” says Nicole Spencer.
Douglas and Nicole Spencer are also proud parents of a one-year old daughter.
They are lucky enough to have grandparents down the road to take care of their baby when there is a fire call. But both Douglas and Nicole agree that they have a second family with the Oglethorpe County Firefighter’s Association.
“We become a family. When you do so much together with these kinds of people, the places that you go and the things that you do, it’s really a family atmosphere,” says Douglas Spencer.
