VIDEO: A wife, mother, grandmother, and empty nester has taken on one of the most important jobs within the Sumter Fire Department. Tammy Tolbert just became Sumter’s first-ever female fire marshal. She hopes to make her community feel safer and use her story to inspire others to do anything they set their mind to. “Immediately, I did not see myself in the fire service. Never did I see myself in the fire service; in fact, I started college to be a nurse.” This is how Sumter Fire’s newest fire marshal, Tammy Tolbert, felt when she was young. Born in the Philippines, Tolbert was born into a military family and moved around during most of her childhood. “My dad got an assignment to Shaw Air Force Base in 1990, and we ended up here shortly after Hurricane Hugo. Went to school here, graduated high school; I moved here when I was a sophomore.”
