Joey RutherfordFriends and family of Joey Rutherford, who died in a recent motorcycle accident at age 29, say he was an experienced thrill seeker who knew how to ride a motorcycle even though he had only recently acquired his own.
They also remembered the father of three boys and longtime volunteer firefighter as a man who cherished his family and was a friend to everybody he knew.
“He’d have done anything for his kids,” his older brother Richard Rutherford said at the visitation service last Wednesday in Soddy-Daisy. “It was all about his family. He would do anything to keep them under a roof, power on and that stuff. He was my younger brother, but he was my hero.”
Joey Rutherford spent more than half of his life as a firefighter for the Lone Oak Volunteer Fire Department, starting as a junior firefighter when he was 11. He worked at Invista along with Josh Partin, the Lone Oak fire chief who served as a pallbearer at his funeral ceremony.
“He was a family man,” Partin said. “Family first, and he’d been in the fire hall 18 years. Can’t replace him. I know that.”
Partin said Joey Rutherford’s oldest son, 10-year-old Noah, decided to help his father’s legacy at the fire department live on.
Just as his father did as a boy, Noah is joining the fire department as a junior firefighter.
“His daddy was his hero,” Richard Rutherford said. “He loves his daddy.”
Richard Rutherford said that as boys, he, Joey and their brother Chris grew up riding ATVs and dirt bikes on their family’s Signal Mountain property.
“He was an adrenaline junkie,” Richard Rutherford said. “He would drive anything, ride anything, anything he could do to get that rush. That’s the way he was.”
A benefit has been established for Joey Rutherford’s three sons. Donations can be made at any SunTrust Bank branch.
The details of his fatal motorcycle wreck on Hixson Pike near the entrance to Northgate Mall are still emerging as a police investigation continues.
Email David Cobb at dcobb@timesfreepress.com