Union’s Main Street beat public safety officer is home after being hospitalized for burns he received Thursday.

Officer Tony Keasler was flown by helicopter to Augusta Burn Center where he underwent surgery. He came home Sunday.

“He is doing really well,” said Keasler’s wife, Kathy. “He’s happy to be home but he misses the people.”

Mrs. Keasler said her 55-year-old husband was preparing to cookout Thursday evening at their Old Ferry Road home on a large, pull behind a vehicle grill.

“He went to relight it and must have hit a gas pocket,” she said.

Flames shot from the grill and burned Keasler, who was not wearing a shirt. Mrs. Keasler grabbed a garden hose and extinguished the fire.

Neighbor John McCarley helped Mrs. Keasler but her husband into their vehicle and she began driving toward Wallace Thomson Hospital. Sgt. Larry Robinson with the public safety department met them at Jimmy’s Galaxy and escorted them the rest of the way to the hospital.

“They started working on him and then he was medivaced to Augusta,” Mrs. Keasler said.

Mrs. Keasler said she and her husband were surprised he was discharged from the hospital so quickly. He will return next week for follow up care.

Keasler grew up in Monarch, a son of the late John and Estelle Keasler. He graduated from Union High School in 1970 and spent the next 25 years in the Army. He served 11 years in Europe, in Operation Desert Storm, Alaska, and several places in the continental United States. He retired at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, where he was first sergeant for a combat medical training company.

He and his wife, the former Katherine Smith of Buffalo, came home to Union in 1995 and Keasler went to work for USC-Union as maintenance supervisor, a position he held for the next 11 years. Mrs. Keasler is a secretary at Union Services.

Keasler joined the public safety department first as a reserve officer and took the Main Street beat two years ago.