Volunteers still actively serving after 50-plus years

Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by DARWIN WEIGEL Vernon Horsmon, left, and Raymond Lankford have been volunteering with fire and rescue squads for much of their lives. Horsmon has been with the Prince Frederick Volunteer Fire Department for 63 years and Lankford has been with the Solomons Volunteer Rescue Squad and Fire Department for 54 years. Both continue to be active heading up committees and providing extensive long experience to help their respective departments through thick and thin. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

Two men who shaped the county's volunteer fire and EMS force remain active today, boasting 118 years of service between them.

Both men not only saw the changes over the years, but made changes in the landscape of volunteer services in the county as fire and EMS service evolved in both Solomons and Prince Frederick. Over the years they each earned Hall of Fame Awards and numerous plaques and were past presidents of fire associations representing the state and county while working at their own businesses. Both agreed that they have known each other as long as they can remember and commend each other's volunteer service.

J. Raymond "Ray" Lankford recalls the exact date, May 23, 1956; he began volunteering in Solomons, running a 1955 Studebaker ambulance.

"We ran from one end of the county to the other," Lankford said, recalling one day when he and his brother Gordon "made three trips to Johns Hopkins [Hospital] in one day." At that time, they used a tiny building on Solomons Island to store the ambulance and held meetings where the now-closed Jethros Restaurant is located, but fire fighting in the area was under the jurisdiction of the Maryland Forest Service, he said.

Back in the 1960s and 70s, the volunteers were called to assist the Maryland State Police and to transport arrested persons to Crownsville, where the barrack was located.

"I've had guns put to my side," and assisted on some dangerous calls, Lankford said, adding that another one of his duties was to get combative people into straight jackets.

"I was known as the straight jacket man," he said.

Lankford, who will turn 84 in January, recalls some dangerous rescue trips out on the Chesapeake Bay in a 14-foot boat and one time in choppy waters when he helped rescue a sailboat with a broken mast.

"We rocked and rolled, but we made it," said Lankford, who was born and raised in Solomons.

"I get the urge to go and do it now," Lankford said of the dangerous rescues, but he now leaves that up to the younger ones.

Along with assisting with rescues, Lankford took on an administrative role at the Solomons Volunteer Fire and Rescue Squad as president from 1976 to 1987, facilitating the purchase of land and building of the two current fire stations of Solomons Volunteer Rescue Squad and Fire Department.

Today, Lankford acts as fundraiser chairman and for years he has held his wedding anniversary/family reunion at the fire station each July. With his wife of 65 years on July 10, 2010, Betty, they have raised 10 children, and have 25 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren, most of whom attend each celebration. Betty, too, has volunteered more than 50 years with the ladies auxiliary and some of their offspring have volunteered, with two of their grandsons being paramedics.

"I wouldn't change anything in my life that I've done," Lankford said.

At the Prince Frederick Volunteer Fire Department, the name Vernon Horsmon has been etched in the book as a volunteer for 63 years and chief for 29 years and today he's still active writing letters and making calls to politicians soliciting stimulus funds to build a new fire station. When the Department of Homeland Security appropriated stimulus funds in September, Anne Arundel County was given $1.8 million for a new station, and despite Horsmon's lobbying and an application for funds for the "shovel-ready project," Prince Frederick did not receive any funds, he said. The Department of Homeland Security announced on Set. 23 that it awarded $166 million for fire departments to build new or modify existing fire stations to enhance response capabilities and protect communities from fire-related hazards, its Web site stated.

Horsmon, who turned 83 last week, taught fire and rescue classes as a field instructor for 45 years through the Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute, and remains active as chairman of the building committee.

Horsmon said the department goes back to 1926 using a Model T- Ford up until the 1930s, but he did not start volunteering until 1944. In the 1940s, all the county services came together under the name Calvert County Volunteer Fire Department and then reorganized in 1985, to be named Prince Frederick.

"We had a number of large fires back then," Horsmon said, recalling the 1940s fire that destroyed the Prince Frederick department store on Main Street where the Courthouse Annex stands today.

"More people volunteered after that," he said. His father and four brothers also volunteered.

"Back then it was a family thing."

Today it's still common for more that one family member to volunteer at one of the county's seven all-volunteer fire and rescue stations.

"It takes time from family if you're going to be active," said Horsmon, who retired as the emergency management director of the county in 1995, but doesn't plan on retiring from volunteering. Horsmon and his wife Jean of 50-plus years, who was also active in the auxiliary, have one child and one grandchild.

It's more demanding and the equipment has changed, he said, but "basically, the tradition is still there from years and years ago; providing protection for your community." Today, however, many of the volunteers are career firefighters and "it's been a big help to us," Horsmon said.

The first full-size fire station sat at what is today the Cumberland & Erly law firm on Main Street, he said, and the department began construction on its current station in 1960.

With the county's help, in 1941 the department purchased a brand new American LaFrance fire truck for $7,000.

"Imagine that today, it was our first new piece we bought," he said. Along with fighting fires and administrative duties, a few of the firefighters designed and built a pump truck during the war in the 1940s when funding was tight, he said.

"We took an old fuel tank and put it on the truck."

Despite the current recession, that would not be an option with today's modern technology and regulations for fire and EMS equipment. The most recent engine truck the fire station purchased cost more than $400,000 and its tower truck's price tag was around $750,000, Horsmon said.

Currently the focus is funding for a new fire station. The architectural drawings are complete for the estimated $4 million building and Horsmon said he will continue to write letters and make phone calls trying to tap into the remaining $40 million in stimulus funding for fire station construction. The remaining funds of the original $210 million, not yet appropriated, will be available until Sept. 30, 2010, as grants for modifying, upgrading or constructing state and local fire stations, according to firechief.com.

Horsmon wondered, "When is it going to be given out?"

charvat@somdnews.com