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Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday named Little Rock Fire Capt. Melissa Peabody as the tenth honoree in Faces of Arkansas, a monthly series that hangs the portraits and stories of everyday Arkansans at the entrance to the governor’s office.
Peabody has spent 20 years with the Little Rock Fire Department and leads an engine company at Station 2, where she is the only woman on the crew. The department has roughly 450 firefighters, and about 20 to 25 are women, according to the profile released by the governor’s office.
She grew up visiting her father, also a firefighter, at his station. He tried to talk her out of the job when she heard on the radio that Little Rock was hiring, but she signed on anyway.
The profile describes how Peabody learned to do a physically demanding job on her own terms after years of measuring herself against the men beside her. She hid both of her pregnancies from her crew for four months so she could stay on shift, worked until a week before giving birth and returned quickly afterward.
In July 2024, Peabody also became a fire marshal, which lets her investigate fires and make arrests in arson cases. She said the investigative work is what drives her, and she hopes to move into fire investigation full time after she becomes eligible to retire in eight years.
Her youngest daughter now visits Station 2, climbs the ropes and drags the training dummy around, and has said she wants to be a firefighter too.
Each Faces of Arkansas installment includes a written profile, portrait photography and a short video, with the framed photo displayed inside the Capitol. The governor’s office says honorees are chosen from people who serve as the heartbeat of their communities, overcome obstacles or play an essential role in their industry.
