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Remembering
John Destry Horton
Grady County Fire Service/Acme Fire Department — Oklahoma
Classification: Volunteer
Rank: Firefighter
Date of Death: March 24, 2006
Age: 32
John Destry Horton was born on May 26,
1973. He lived in Rush Springs,
Oklahoma, and married his childhood
sweetheart, Brandy Pittman,
in 1998. They started a family
and had two daughters, Kiley
and McKenzie.
Destry worked for the
Rush Springs Volunteer
Fire Department for several
years before moving
to the Chickasha Fire
Department in 1999.
He was a paramedic,
a Hazmat Technician,
a PALS instructor, and
had just been promoted
to driver. He worked at
Lindsey EMS and was
the EMS director at Rush
Springs for two years.
Destry was the worship leader
at Grand Assembly of God and a
youth sponsor. He loved music, singing,
playing his guitar, and writing his
own songs. On his days off, he refereed every
possible sport there was and could often be found
on the golf course with his best friend. A person
could also find him hiding in a tree, scoping out
that “big buck” or hunting for quail with his bird
dog, Boomer.
Destry gave of himself whenever the call came, and
that day was March 1, 2006. He gave up a day of golfing
to help the volunteer firemen fight wildfires in
southern Oklahoma. In the midst of chaos, Destry
did not think twice before jumping out of the fire
truck to help a fellow fireman. He stepped into
an inferno and suffered severe burns to a
majority of his body. He fought for 24
days with everything he had in him
and went home to be with Jesus
on March 24, 2006.
His fire department friends
called him “Golden Phone”
because of the volume of
calls he would receive
while on duty. One friend
said that they could
always play a good joke
on Destry and he was
always ready for a good
game of ping-pong. How
those two characteristics
coincide, only his buddies
might ever know, but that
is their piece of Destry.
These are only bits and pieces.
A few words on a page cannot
sum up a life, no matter how we
might try. There are a million things
his family and friends will treasure in
their hearts: jokes, his smile, a look, some
wisdom shared, or his contagious laugh. There
are shared stories, respect, and a fond remembrance
for a man who gave his life for another.
Destry still looks out of pictures with kind eyes, eyes
of a man in love with his God, his family, his work,
and his life. He looks out as a man who fought as
he did to hang on to that life—a man who wouldn’t
give up.
For Destry, death was not merely the end. It WAS
the beginning.