Joseph Spruce Riggsbee was working in the plumbing department at DuPont Co. and not liking it when he went to downtown Richmond to see about getting a job as a policeman.

"He thought it over and decided he liked the fire department best," said his wife, Myrtle Lassiter Cunningham Riggsbee.

Mr. Riggsbee, who retired as a battalion chief with the Richmond Bureau of Fire after a 35-year career, died Thursday in a Henrico County hospital after suffering a heart attack, stroke and kidney failure.

The 91-year-old Mineral resident will be remembered at a memorial service Monday at 1:30 p.m. at Nelsen Funeral Homes' Reid Chapel, 412 S. Washington Highway in Ashland.

Mr. Riggsbee joined the bureau in the early 1950s as a firefighter and rose to lieutenant, captain, assistant battalion chief and finally battalion chief, said former colleague Nelson Boykin, a retired lieutenant with the Richmond Bureau of Fire.

"The city used to be divided into four divisions and there were four fire battalions and four lead officers," Boykin said. "A battalion would respond to multialarm fires -- all first-alarm calls -- but they didn't go on medical calls or one-company calls unless it was something special.

"On one occasion I was at a fire with Joe. Our battalion had just entered a building north of Leigh Street or Marshall Street when he ordered us out of the building because it was about to collapse. It was a timely thing. We could have been trapped there."

Mr. Riggsbee had experience with aerial trucks, according to Wallace H. Lawrence Jr. of Goochland, a retired assistant chief with the fire bureau.

In sitting around talking with colleagues, Mr. Riggsbee talked about how he never had to climb a tree to retrieve a cat.

"He said they had always come down. But he said they didn't appreciate your getting them down," Lawrence said. "They'd claw and bite you and everything else."

Mr. Riggsbee spent part of his career at Station No. 1, Battalion No. 1 at 308 N. 24th St. He spent the majority of it at Station No. 18, Battalion No. 2 at 412 Thompson St.

A Richmond native, he lived with his mother and maternal grandparents after his father abandoned the family, his wife said. He left high school to go to work but later attended Mechanics Institute in Richmond.

He was a World War II Army veteran who landed with the 29th Infantry in the first wave on Omaha Beach on D-Day.

"He didn't talk too much about it because it made him too upset. It was so bad seeing all those guys getting killed." He also served in Germany.

He was the widower of Mary Henley Riggsbee. There are no other immediate survivors besides his wife.