Monument to Firefighters Takes Shape

By NANCY WRIDE

Jan. 11, 1989 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

One died of job-related cancer at 42. Another was thrown to his death from the back of a fire truck turning a corner. Others survived their injuries as Orange County firefighters but were permanently disabled by falling ladders and burning, collapsing buildings.

Many have never gone to a fire--the dispatcher who saved a baby’s life by coaching a parent in first-aid by telephone, the fire safety volunteer whose “stop-drop-and-roll” lessons helped a child escape a house fire.

They are among Orange County’s 4,500 fire service employees. And a small group of supporters believe that these men and women are unsung heroes who deserve to be honored as county police have been--with a monument.

They have formed a committee to begin raising $200,000 to build Trinity, a 30-ton, white California granite tribute to fallen firefighters, working ones and those to come. Committee members say they want to make sure the monument honors the dead but also pays tribute to the living troops, their families and future firefighters.

Killed on Way to Fire

It was in the early morning of April 9, 1983, that Pat Hund’s husband was killed en route to a fire.

Capt. Gil Hund, a 23-year veteran of the Fullerton Fire Department, was riding in the right front seat of a fire engine as it maneuvered along Nutwood Avenue in Fullerton, its siren and horn sounding, lights flashing.

Three cars stopped at an intersection on Nutwood near the Orange Freeway to let the fire engine pass. A fourth car did not. The collision threw Hund from the engine. He died at the scene, at age 48.

“Most of the firemen and policemen don’t go bragging about themselves,” Pat Hund said, “but the memorial seems like a nice idea.”

A year after her husband’s death, Hund attended memorial ceremonies at a firefighters’ training school in Emmitsburg, Md., where a monument had been erected to honor fallen firefighters.

“I hadn’t made up my mind (whether) I wanted to go until the very last,” she said. “I think I was afraid to go.” But the services and the monument, she said, made her “very happy” that she had attended.

Having a monument to visit closer to home “makes anyone who goes into this work think, ‘Gee, other people care,’ ” added Hund, the mother of a grown son and daughter.

“I think all my children feel the same. My son takes my grandson down to the fire station to see the trucks, and he’s only 3. Sort of as a way to remember what my husband did. I’m sure my daughter feels the same way, too. She was very close to her father.”

Riverside sculptor Frank Hagen has already designed Orange County’s 18-foot-high monument, and a model has been constructed. The committee hopes that it can be located behind the county Hall of Administration in Santa Ana when it is finished in early 1990.

When given an opportunity, organizers say, Orange County residents surely will take the opportunity to thank those who risk their lives for the community each day.

‘What It’s All About’

“I’ll be able to take my son or my grandson or someone who wants to be a firefighter and say, ‘This is what it’s all about,’ ” said Fountain Valley Fire Battalion Chief Paul Summers, a member of the Orange County Firefighters Monument Committee.

“As wives and husbands and sisters, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, we know that every day that guy goes to work could be his last day,” added Peggy Glenn, one of the committee organizers, who is married to Huntington Beach arson investigator Gary Glenn.

“To me, as a spouse, it was a chance to, I guess, get sentimental,” Glenn said of the monument. “If anything were to happen to him, I would have no regrets . . . but I would miss him terribly. And having a monument to go to, to remember him, would mean a lot to me.”

The monument idea came from Msgr. John Sammon, vicar of community and pastoral life for the Catholic Diocese of Orange, official chaplain to every firefighter in the county and to many police officers, too. He is actually chaplain to firefighters statewide, but nowhere is he more beloved than in Orange County, where he can be found at virtually every big blaze or disaster. He sometimes arrives at disaster scenes before police and is said to know most firefighters by name.

‘Great Bunch of People’

Full of mirth after nearly 20 years of serving the county, Sammon’s contacts with firefighters have taught him how earnest and involved they are in the community, he said. “Fire service has been rated as one of the most dangerous and injurious jobs that a person can enter into . . . and they are a great bunch of people.”

While attending the dedication of the Orange County Peace Officers Memorial 2 years ago, he watched a young boy approach the monument with his grandmother, who told the lad, “This honors your father and your grandfather,” Sammon recalled.

There is a national monument for firefighters in Maryland, one in Sacramento and one in Los Angeles.

“And I thought to myself, ‘I don’t think there’s any place a grandmother could take her grandson like this for a firefighter here,’ ” Sammon said. “So being the chaplain for so many of them, it made me start thinking about it.”

Then he thought of the half a dozen or so firefighters who have been killed in the line of duty, and of the countless numbers who have been injured, crippled and forced to retire because of job-related injuries. In addition, Sammon said, he thought of the other victims of the job--the families whose lives are interrupted because of a firefighter’s odd hours.

“It seemed only right,” he said.

Recognizing that most of the firefighters he knows would be self-conscious about the idea of soliciting money for their own monument, Sammon discussed the idea with fire chiefs and community leaders for several months before the committee was formed.

‘That’s What We’re Doing’

“Nobody wants to blow their own horn,” he said, “but somebody’s got to blow it. So that’s what we’re doing.”

After a few months of introducing the idea to the county’s firefighters, the committed distributed gold, bronze and pewter pins representing the monument for contributions. Now the 10-member committee and an equal number of honorary members are planning fund-raising events and slide shows to spread the word among corporations, small businesses and the public.

Though efforts have barely begun, about $12,000 in seed money has been raised by firefighters and their families, and by community groups and businesses like the Orangewood Foundation and Union Federal Savings & Loan. Carl Karcher, hamburger chain magnate and a friend of Sammon, is serving as co-chairman of the honorary committee.

Fountain Valley Fire Chief Richard E. Jorgensen, one of the early supporters of the monument, said the committee needs to raise half of the price tag--$100,000--by Oct. 14, 1989, the beginning of Fire Prevention Week. The monument should be finished 6 months later.

“I think there’s a very good chance that the goal can be reached,” said William Steiner, executive director of the Orangewood Foundation, the fund-raising arm of the county’s shelter for abused and neglected children. Steiner, the man who was instrumental in a drive that netted $8 million in private money to rebuild the shelter, is working with the monument committee as an adviser. But his interests are also personal: his 23-year-old son, Jim, is a Corona city firefighter.

Medical Aid Calls

“I don’t think people realize that up to 80% of a firefighter’s time is spent on medical aid calls,” Steiner said. “I think people realize that these people can be responsible for our lives, and they are willing to give something back. . . . You know, firefighters in this county are very community-minded.”

Through their employee associations, monument organizers say, firefighters collect toys for Orangewood, Toys for Tots, toys for county foster-children programs, attend special events for burn victims and work closely with Scouting programs.

“They are always willing to do something for others,” Glenn said of firefighters, “but rarely are they willing to do something for themselves. . . . They’re self-conscious, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t contributed to putting (the monument) up. They’ll raise the money to help another guy who was injured, but they don’t want to be asking for the money themselves.”

The monument will have three columns that arch from a triangular base to a 5-foot-wide disc, from which a brass fire service bell--the old fire call--will be hung. A brass statute of a firefighter will stand between the columns.

The life-size statue will be constructed from the brass couplings that firefighters are beginning to collect from worn out fire hoses. Two 50-gallon drums already have been filled with the 5-pound couplings at just one Brea fire station, Jorgensen said.

“I think when the people know that they are going to have an opportunity to say, ‘Thank you,’ ” Sammon said happily, “they will.”

Pat Hund agrees. Although her firefighter husband has been dead for 6 years, Hund remains “very close to a lot of the firemen and their families,” she said. “My closest friends are firemen and their wives.”

Times staff writer Mark Landsbaum contributed to this story. ORANGE COUNTY FIREFIGHTING INJURIES Two firefighters have died while on duty in the past 8 years, one in 1984, the other in 1980.

Year Injuries

1987 65

1986 96

1985 159

1984 95

1983 68

1982 121

1981 81

1980 142

Source: National Fire Protection Assn. 1987 NATIONAL FIREFIGHTING DEATHS

Here’s how 126 firefighters died while on duty in 1987.

Category Deaths