For more than 30 years, Dowagiac’s Mike Mattix dedicated his life to the safety and wellbeing of the people in his hometown.

As a captain with the Dowagiac Fire Department, Mattix joined his fellow firefighters in combating a massive amount of fires since he first joined the ranks of the station in 1984, and helped save many lives in the process. He also helped prepare many of the city’s bravest for the duties they would face on the field, as the Dowagiac department’s fire instructor, a position he held for more than a decade.

Last Friday, though, the Dowagiac firefighter performed his last duties with the local firehouse: saying goodbye to the people he has worked alongside for the past 32 years.

“It was a surreal experience,” Mattix recalled about his last shift. “I thought, ‘I’m no longer going to be coming here anymore. I’m not going to be waking up and coming to 302 Wolf St. to start my days anymore.’”

Mattix is now following in the footsteps of his father, Wayne, by taking charge of his own firehouse. The Dowagiac native has begun serving as chief of the North Berrien Fire Rescue Department, which is responsible for protecting residents of the City of Coloma and Hagar and Coloma townships in Berrien County.

As part of his new job, Mattix and his family will move to the Coloma area — and will mark the first time they have lived outside the Grand Old City.

The son of a longtime Dowagiac fire chief, Mattix has been surrounded by firefighters for as long as he can remember. Some of his earliest memories are of visiting his father at the old firehouse, which was located at Park Place and Depot Drive downtown for years before the new station was built on Wolf Street.

However, following in his dad’s footsteps was not originally what Mattix planned to do after he graduated Dowagiac Union High School in 1982. Instead, he wanted to get into radio broadcasting, and worked for several years at the local radio station, WDOW.

However, six months after marrying his wife, Tracy, in 1984, his father talked him into joining the Dowagiac department as an on-call firefighter after promising him that the pay would allow him to help cover some of the young couple’s bills.

Mattix’s initial reluctance to join the family business quickly evaporated after becoming a member of the firehouse.

“I fell in love with it,” he said. “After the first year, I really understood why my dad loved his job and what he did so much. The job just grew on me.”

The following year, Mattix was voted by his fellow firefighters as the 1985 Firefighter of the Year.

After working part-time at the department for 14 years, Mattix joined the firehouse full-time in 1998. Climbing the ranks in the years that followed, Mattix eventually became a fire captain, and served many roles in the department, including training officer, operational officer and juvenile fire setter intervention specialist.

As a certified Fire Officer 3, Mattix holds the highest level of distinction possible for a fire instructor in Michigan, and has taken more than 365 hours worth of classroom and practical instruction.

“Pretty much all the officers at the department, other than Deputy Chief [Guy] Evans, did a lot of their training under me,” he said. “There are quite of few other firefighters throughout the county who had their training with me and the rest of department as well.”

The Dowagiac City Council honored Mattix in 2013 with one of the city’s Life Saver awards, after he and others with the department helped save the life of a woman who they discovered in critical condition during a wellbeing check at a local apartment complex.

While leaving the Dowagiac department was a bittersweet experience for him, Mattix said that the people of the new communities he is serving have welcomed him with open arms, and that he is ready for the challenges ahead.

He also thanked the men and women of Dowagiac allowing him to serve them for the last 32 years.

“I’m gonna miss the people,” Mattix said. “I really am. Every job has its fair share of politics, but what I’m going to miss are the people I’ve worked with, and, in a lot of cases, I’ve grown up with.”