Longtime Surry EMS Director John Shelton Dies

88.5 WFDD - Public Radio For The Piedmont | By Paul Garber

Published January 19, 2021 at 5:18 PM EST

John Shelton. Image courtesy of Surry County.

Surry County's longtime emergency services director John Shelton has died.

He was a calm voice in a time of crisis, whether it was a plane crash, a mountain rescue, a wildfire, or a major weather event. He worked closely with the media during emergencies to get information to the public quickly, and if he couldn't answer questions right away, he'd explain why.

Shelton served in the department for more than 40 years. A statement from Surry County officials noted that he started as a paramedic and worked his way up to lead the department.

Along the way, he earned a statewide reputation for his professionalism.

Shelton died over the weekend. He was 67. A cause of death has not been publicly released.

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Paul Garber

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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Longtime Surry EMS Director John Shelton Dies

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