Abernathy looking to follow in father’s footsteps

Editor’s note: This is the first of a twopart series profiling the candidates running for Pittsburg Mayor in the May 4 election. The Gazette will profile Abernathy’s challenger Carrie Thomas in the March 14 edition.

David Abernathy, a fifth-generation Pittsburg native, has some big shoes to fill to become Pittsburg’s next mayor and he’s up for the challenge.

The city’s acting mayor since former Mayor Shawn Kennington stepped down after being appointed Camp County Constable, Abernathy’s family legacy casts a long shadow. His father, D.H. Abernathy, served as mayor for 52 years before retiring and handing the baton to Kennington 13 years ago. He has been a City Council member since 2014, serving as mayor pro-tem. His father also served four years on the council before stepping into the mayor’s office.

“My father, I think, is where I got my service background. He had been mayor here virtually all my life growing up,” Abernathy said.

Father and son had a shared passion for the fire service, which Abernathy turned into a career, working for the Texas A&M Forest Service, retiring as an assistant chief in 2013 after 34 years. He returned in a part-time consulting role in 2014 conducting internal and external training. He also owns Abernathy Training and Consulting, offering private consulting on fire apparatus designs, firetruck designs, firefighter training, and incident management.

Abernathy, who is 67, got his start in the field early, becoming a volunteer firefighter as a teenager.

“I’ve been going to fires all my life, and when I was old enough to get on the department, I was a junior member. One of the paid firefighters got sick, and they needed somebody to relieve him, so I started working as a full-time firefighter by myself when I was 16,” Abernathy said. “I like to point that out when I say I’ve been on the fire department for 52 years because people are wondering if I’m 80 or something.”

He and his father also worked in their backyard shop to build fire several trucks. David Abernathy designed five others.

“My father was a mechanical engineer by education, and he liked hands-on stuff, so his hobby was building fire trucks. He and I built eight fire trucks together, giving them to the city and county. One of the trucks – Booster 3 – that we built when I was in high school is still in service today,” he said. “To this day, the fire service has been good to me and opened a lot of doors.”

Abernathy worked at The Pittsburg Gazette before landing his dream job with the forest service. Looking around the newsroom during this interview, he said it is ironic that he was in The Gazette office the day he co-founded the Camp County EMS program. He had just left the paper with the first ambulance in the fleet and was filling it the tank with gas when he took the first ambulance call. He was also working in the newsroom the day his new job offer came knocking in 1979.

“I had applied for the district office to be a supervisor, and they turned me down. So, one day I was sitting here happy to be at The Gazette and here comes a forester, and he says, ‘I’d like to visit with you for a little bit.’ I thought he was going to put an article in the paper, so I said, ‘Drag up a chair, Ken, and we’ll get this out,’” Abernathy recalled.

But the forester wasn’t there for an article. The two took the conversation outside the back door, and he offered Abernathy the job.

“I stayed 34 years and worked my way up to one of the assistant chiefs and had responsibility for all of East Texas from Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast,” he said.

During that time, he helped manage major disasters and events across the country, including two Super Bowls, the Space Shuttle Columbia recovery, hurricanes, wildfires, and provided training and help to agencies including the Secret Service, FBI, FEMA and the Texas DPS. When George W. Bush was governor of Texas, he appointed Abernathy as the presiding officer of the Texas Commission on Fire Protection, and he served on the commission for 13 years.

Still committed to his volunteer gigs back home, Abernathy remained a volunteer firefighter, served as a first responder for Camp County EMS and served as its president for 13 years. He also served as Camp County’s emergency management coordinator and fire marshal for more than 30 years, initiated the citizen’s emergency alert system and the revolving fire apparatus replacement fund.

Abernathy is also a reserve deputy for the Camp County Sheriff’s Office. His additional community service roles include board member of the Pittsburg Economic Development Corporation and the NTCC Fire Academy Advisory Board, president of the Northeast Texas Rural Heritage Museum and chairman of the board of UT Health-Pittsburg. He is a member of First United Methodist Church in Pittsburg.

Reflecting on his father’s influence, and his service over the years, he said, his experience brings a lot to the mayor’s race.

“When I first got on the council, I thought I could I could bring a lot to the table. I was familiar with city operations and the fire department, with the city budget. It’s from growing up under the roof with the mayor for 50 years. I knew what he experienced, all the phone calls, the meetings he went to,” Abernathy said. “I knew what I was getting into, but I never thought the mayoral position would open. I had no aspirations for it at all. I thought Shawn was doing a great job and I could contribute on the council.”

When Kennington’s chance to step into the constable’s office presented itself with former Constable John Cortelyou's retirement, people encouraged Abernathy to run.

“So, I threw my hat in the ring,” he said.

Accomplishments that he’s proud of as a member of the council include promoting Pittsburg and doing outreach to bring in economic development. He helped craft the city’s burning ordinance, which he says would stack up to any ordinance in Texas. He’s also a hawk when it comes to proofreading the agendas and city documents.

“I may spend all weekend going through the agenda line by line. The same with the budget, so when I get to the council meeting, I’m as spot-on prepared as I can be,” Abernathy said. “I know I’ve been effective in that regard.”

His platform as mayor, he said, would focus on “building upon what the people before us did.”

“We didn’t invent the wheel. We build upon what they did, and we make our own legacy that we can pass on for someone else to build on. I would like to be able to do that,” Abernathy said. “I think my father did a fabulous job here. Shawn has taken it to another level. Shawn has been able to pull off some things that were awe-inspiring to me, how he was able to accomplish things with his personality and his drive, and I’d like to build upon that.”

Part of that, he said, would be perpetuating the city’s public safety and emergency management role, and promoting economic development and tourism.

“Our parks are getting in fabulous shape. A lot of people when looking to come to a new community look at the parks, the school system, and the recreation. So, I’d like to expand the recreational opportunities, but you can’t have that without economic development,” he said. ‘With my contacts, my personality, I’d like to ratchet that up a little bit more.”

He envisions the day that Pittsburg and Mount Pleasant have grown to meet each other’s city limits.

“It’s going to take a village to do this. We have new restaurants and businesses opening, and I think we’re going to see some expansion on that. I’d like to see us do our share in growing north before they grow south. That’s inevitable. It will happen. The city limit signs will be back-to-back one of these days.”

Abernathy said he would appreciate the support of the residents in Pittsburg.

“This is something I want to do, not something I’ve been forced into doing. I would appreciate everybody’s support and vote, and hopefully, we can make this a bigger and better place,” he said.

There are two things Abernathy said he would not be doing if he were elected mayor.

“You have an exclusive right here. I’m not going to be mayor for 52 years and I’m not going to jump out of an airplane,” he said, laughing.