Three decades ago Tom Cordell was a jack-of-all-trades at a Carrollton radio station – overseeing its day-to-day operations, sharing the announcing load, selling advertisements and so on. What intrigued him, though, were the reporting assignments that took him on ambulance emergency runs.
“Finally he had an epiphany,” said his wife, Andrea Cordell. “He told me that he was tired of selling ads. He felt his calling was to become a paramedic and serve and protect the public in that way.”
He got his start working for a friend’s ambulance service in west Georgia. Later, while completing community college courses in emergency management, he took a job with Grady EMS as an overnight shift supervisor. Twenty years ago he moved to DeKalb County’s Fire and Rescue Department, where he was twice awarded its Medal of Exceptional Merit, advanced to the rank of captain and served as an administrative aide to Fire Chief David Foster.
Capt. Tom Cordell, 60, of Dacula, died at St. Joseph’s Hospital on Sunday of respiratory failure. His funeral is scheduled for 4 p.m. Saturday at Hebron Baptist Church, to be preceded by a procession leaving at 3 p.m. from Tom M. Wages Lawrenceville Chapel.
“Tom truly believed in providing the best possible service for the people of the county,” said Chief Foster, of Lawrenceville. “Even when he was being treated for cancer and getting his chemo treatment in the mornings, he’d come straight to work in the afternoons.”
Recently Capt. Cordell was project manager for a new emergency command center at the Fire and Rescue Department headquarters in Tucker. “We did a million-dollar job for $180,000,” Chief Foster said, thanks to the volunteer hands-on labor of department officers and staff, including Capt. Cordell.
The completed command center had its initial test run just days ago, Chief Foster said. That’s where DeKalb officials devised and carried out emergency responses to the disastrous late September flooding.
“I can’t imagine a more encouraging, protective boss than Tom,” said Norma Campbell of Atlanta, who worked for Capt. Cordell for 30 years, both at Grady and in DeKalb. “He was always interested in our well-being and never complained about his own problems, even though we knew he had serious long-term health issues.”
Capt. Cordell made an equally favorable impression as a paramedic, Ms. Campbell said. “Over the years Tom received dozens and dozens of letters from people he had rescued, thanking him for saving and even changing their lives,” she said.
“Tom was the best recruiter that DeKalb Fire and Rescue had,” his wife said. “Whenever we’d go out, say, to a restaurant and he would spot someone working there who might make a good paramedic or firefighter, he’d ask the person, ‘Have you considered saving lives instead of serving pizza?’ Then he’d launch into a sales pitch for his department. He did the same thing with our daughter’s boyfriends.”
Additional survivors include two sons, Christopher Cordell of Atlanta and Brian Cordell of Dacula; a daughter, Caitlin Cordell of Dacula; and two grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the Georgia Firefighters Burn Foundation, 2575 Chantilly Drive, Atlanta, GA 30324 or www.GFBF.org.
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