Saturday May 2, 2015 dawned as a beautiful day and God was smiling down on the firefighters who had gathered at the NewBurg Volunteer Fire Department and Rescue Squad in Charles County Maryland for the 68th Annual Convention. On Saturday we held the memorial service at the Cobb Island firehouse and after that we adjourned to the firehouse in Newburg for dinner and the meeting. It was a beautiful service at Cobb Island with songs and comments from all the officers and clergy and it was an honor to be there to remember all our departed brothers and sisters in the fire service. Man when they played those bag pipes at the end I don’t think there was a dry eye in the crowd.

This year sadly we had three of our members leave us to spend eternity in that big firehouse in the sky with our Lord and savior. Poppa Ray Hanbury, Gail Kropp, and Mark Buhl were the members we lost this last year. All of them were a huge part of our department and we will never be able to replace them. All we can do is to bury them in our hearts and know that they are always looking down on us. It was so nice that families of each departed member were able to be there with us. I’m sure they were all impressed with the service and the way we said our good-byes.

The slate of officers for the upcoming year were nominated and as usual there was nobody that ran against the slate that had been proposed. After this was done it was time to sit down for a wonderful meal before continuing with the rest of business.

After dinner and dessert (check out the picture of the goodie table) it was time to get down to business. Everyone was hoping to get in on this action with both fire prevention and emergency medical service awards i.e. life saving and training to be decided. Well let me tell you Bay District did very well in the following categories. Fire Prevention we won the following: Class 5 All Year Round and Class 5E Special Project Life Safety. Bruce Theden and his wife Cathy did a lot for the year round and Melvin Tennyson got the special project life safety with his project of getting smoke alarms out to the community. Then we won the big one and that is the Roland B. Duke award for best fire prevention in 2014.

Next our chaplain Keith Fairfax won an award for keeping us in good graces with the big guy upstairs. Then we had two people inducted into the Hall of Fame our President Wayne Johnson and Past Fire Chief Richard Redmond. Congrats to both of them for this honor.

Now last but in no way least we had a life safety award for saving the life of one of our citizens. Firefighter Wayne Johnson, Jr. responded on a call where a young lady had stopped breathing after overdosing. Wayne along with the crew of Engine 32 firefighters Richard Sullivan, Sr., Captain Daniel Burroughs, Lieut. John Thomas, firefighter Marcus Briscoe, Sgt. Kyle Hayden, firefighter Brian Ticson administered the proper drug to counteract the drug that the patient had taken. Due to the actions of Wayne and the others on the crew this young lady is alive and well. This is something that every firefighter strives to do during the course of their career. Hats off to all these guys.

Now I don’t want to forget two of our young officers for winning the dress out challenge Sgt. Steven VanNess and Sgt. Kyle Hayden. And the War Wagon 3 (Engine 32) won the best 1500 GPM pumper. Kudo’s to all.

Now they took a ton of pictures so I will try and pull out some of the better ones. Enjoy….