March 23rd, 2016 by WCBC Radio

The Cumberland Times News reports the Allegany/Garrett Counties Volunteer Fire and Rescue Association is working to erect monuments commemorating emergency medical service and fire personnel who have died in the line of duty. 

“It’s a very important project,” said Dick DeVore, the association’s president. “It’s important that those individuals are memorialized.”

In Allegany and Garrett counties, 19 EMS and fire personnel have died in action. Association members hope to purchase two stones from Frostburg Memorials, placing one in each county. 

Gary Carpenter, president of the Baltimore Pike Volunteer Fire Department and chairman of the committee raising funds to acquire the monuments, knows firsthand what it’s like to lose a fellow firefighter. 

Carpenter said fellow firefighter Clyde Burley was killed at the scene of a vehicle crash on Cash Valley Road in the 1970s, when both men were members of the Corriganville Volunteer Fire Department. They went to school together and joined the fire department at nearly the same time.