Franklin, TN – After 25 years with the Franklin Fire Department, and 30 total years in the fire service, Lieutenant Paul Seltz will retire at the end of this month.  The community is invited to join Seltz’s family, friends, and colleagues in celebrating his career on Monday, July 29th, at 1 PM in the Franklin City Hall Training Room (Church Street entrance).

Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Seltz pursued firefighting after high school, obtaining his Firefighter I and II certifications and his EMT license.  Automotive plant closures made it difficult to find a job in Michigan. With his future wife’s family planning to relocate to Spring Hill where the Saturn plant was being built, he decided to look for firefighting jobs in Middle Tennessee.  He was hired by the City of Columbia Fire and Rescue Department in 1994.  He worked there for five years before being hired by Franklin in 1999 by Fire Chief Donnie Claiborne.

Seltz was promoted to the rank of engineer in 2003 and spent most of his career on B-shift at Station 1 downtown, where he enjoyed driving Tower 1 and working for Captains Anthony Pasley (Ret.), and Joe Hill.  He was promoted to lieutenant in 2022 and has been the officer at Station 4 in Fieldstone Farms on C-shift since that promotion.

Throughout his career, Seltz received several awards, including two Meritorious Service Awards.  The first was for being part of the mutual aid swift water rescue team that rescued two adults whose vehicle was submerged in flood water in Maury County in 2022. The second was for helping rescue a patient who was pinned beneath a church bus following an I-65 rollover crash involving multiple vehicles last year. He received four Phoenix Awards (2016, 2017, 2019, and 2023) for helping to save the life of a patient in cardiac arrest.  The 2019 incident involved a man who was a Pumpkinfest volunteer who collapsed at a meeting before the event.  The responders, including Seltz, went on to be recognized at the state level for this call, receiving the EMS Star of Life Award.  Seltz received an Exemplary Service Award in 2016 for providing exemplary medical care, and a Deployment Award for his South Carolina flood deployment in 2015.

Fire Chief Glenn Johnson said, “Congratulations to Lt. Paul Seltz on his well-deserved retirement after 25 years of dedicated service.  We are grateful for his commitment, leadership, expertise, and abilities that have made a difference on countless emergency scenes.  We appreciate his hard work, thank him for his service, and wish him all the best in his retirement.”

Seltz and his wife Lisa will celebrate their 29th wedding anniversary this year and live just outside Columbia in Santa Fe.  They have three sons: Joshua, who graduated from Lindsey Wilson College in Kentucky with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and is a Police Officer for the Columbia Police Department; Carter who attends Martin Luther College in Minnesota and plans to pursue a career as an elementary/middle school teacher when he graduates next year; and Ryan, who will graduate in December from Austin Peay State University and plans to pursue a career in the financial world.

Upon retirement, Seltz will continue his firefighting career with the Columbia Fire and Rescue Department, where he got his start in the fire service 30 years ago. 

View Lt. Paul Seltz's retirement celebration flyer here.

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