Marble Falls mourns fire chief lost during Central Texas floods

MARBLE FALLS — The first breath of the bagpipes rose like smoke into still air.

They wailed the notes of “Amazing Grace” as two chestnut-brown horses marched solemnly around the ring of the Marble Falls Rodeo on a hot Friday evening. In the long shadows of an evening summer sun, dozens of first responders and hundreds of spectators watched in silence.

One of the horses, riderless, carried a worn pair of firefighters’ boots in its stirrups. Turned backwards and draped with an American flag — an echo of military funerals — the shoes symbolized that Fire Chief Michael Phillips “may be gone, but he’ll never be forgotten,” the announcer told the crowd.

The ceremony July 18, held on the rodeo’s annual First Responders Night, was meant to honor a man who cannot yet be buried. At about 4:30 a.m. July 5, Phillips’ colleagues saw floodwaters surge and sweep him and the person he was trying to save into Cow Creek. Search crews found Phillips’ Jeep crushed into the mud, but have not recovered the fire chief’s body after more than two weeks of searching.

He is now one of two people still missing in the Austin area after catastrophic flooding killed at least 136 people across Central Texas on July 4 and 5.

At the ceremony, local police, firefighters, dispatchers and paramedics surrounded Phillips’ wife and daughter as soldiers folded the flag and presented it to them. Afterwards, some of them brushed back tears.

Phillips was a pillar of the Hill Country community. He had spent 30 years in the Marble Falls Area Volunteer Fire Department and worked as maintenance director for the Marble Falls school district until his retirement in 2023, according to his Facebook page.

Interviews with his family, colleagues and fellow first responders paint a picture of a disciplined man whose life revolved around teaching and community service — someone who held himself and others to high standards and helped them achieve them. Family, colleagues and strangers alike remember him as a generous and kind soul.

His wife, Cecilia Phillips, said that “the fire service was his life. He loved to serve, never wanted any attention or gratification or anything like that. That would bother him.”

Her husband went above and beyond the requirements of a volunteer, earning a certification as an emergency medical technician and becoming a commissioned firefighter through the Texas Commission on Fire Protection, Cecilia Phillips added in an email to the Statesman on Tuesday.

“I am so proud of him,” she wrote.

He loved people, too.

“We could go out of state, and he’d still find somebody he knows,” said his daughter, Megan Newton.

Newton, a mom of four, said he loved teaching her and his grandchildren new things. She’ll miss being able to call him when she needed to change a tire, or fix the sink, or repair a toilet.

“He didn’t want me to be dependent on anybody,” she said.

If a kid walked up to a fire truck, Phillips would show him how to spray water and “let him do everything but drive it,” said volunteer firefighter Captain Thomas Jacobs. 

Several first responders said that Phillips was always the last person to leave a rescue call, staying even after EMS gave firefighters the “all clear” to head back to the station.

He was also a trusted presence in his day job. One of the many teachers Phillips helped was Christina Hartley, who worked alongside him for 17 years.

“He was like a father figure to me,” she said.

He was there for her in and out of school. In 2015, a drunk driver crashed into the car her mom and grandmother were traveling in, killing her grandmother. It was Phillips who responded to the 911 call and pulled Hartley’s mom out of the mangled vehicle.

“It really bonded us,” she said. “He's just someone who would bend over backwards to help you.”

Continuing the mission

Cecilia Phillips, who serves as the fire department’s treasurer, said that she plans to continue in that role.

“I know they need me,” she said, laughing. “Who else is going to run payroll?”

Jacobs, who is taking the helm of Marble Falls’ fire department, said the loss is “difficult on everybody.” But even as they move forward, Phillips’ voice still guides their steps.

“We’re just trying to keep it together for our crew and our members and staff at the fire department, just the same thing he’d want us to do,” Jacobs said. “He wants us to move on, wants us to go help other people. He doesn’t want us worrying about him.”

Before the rodeo began, Precinct 4 Constable Millicent “Missy” Bindseil reminded the first responders: “It’s okay to laugh and dance.”

“That’s what he would have wanted,” she said.