Preserving Firefighting History, One Piece at a Time

Collecting has been in my blood ever since I was a little kid.

In the late 1970s when I was in elementary school, I collected baseball cards and Star Wars figures. Shortly after becoming a volunteer firefighter with the Central Nyack Fire Department in 1992, I started trading fire department patches with other firefighters from around the world. In 1998 I became aware of eBay and found an old firefighting medal from the 1903 Hudson Valley Volunteer Fireman’s Association's Annual Convention held in Haverstraw. It was beautiful and I had to have it. For the past 13 years I have been buying items related to firefighting from Rockland County. I have bought badges, ribbons, patches, post cards, photographs, certificates and many other items over the years all in an effort to preserve the history of the fire service.

However, not all of my items come from eBay. I attend several shows and flea markets throughout the country specializing in fire memorabilia and almost always find at least one or two items from Rockland. I have also had local people donate items to my collection.

Over the years some of my collection has been displayed in the Valley Cottage Library and the Rockland County Volunteer Fire Services Museum, where I currently serve as a trustee. Part of the fun of collecting these items is researching where they came from and who they may have belonged to.

Recently, a seller on eBay had listed an old badge from the Germonds Fire Protective Association. I contacted him  to see if he had any additional information on the origin of the badge, but unfortunately he did not. All he could tell me is that the badge had been in his collection for over 30 years. At first I didn't think it could have been from Germonds, NY because I had never heard of a fire department in Germonds. With research help from my father Tom, who lives in Arizona, we were able to determine through the Rockland Review's "This Week In Rockland" column, done by the late John Iurica, that there was in fact a Germonds Fire Department as early as 1933. With this new found knowledge I knew the badge was not only rare but may be the only surviving badge of a now defunct Rockland fire department. Thankfully, I was the high bidder and won the auction.

After receiving the badge I took a photo of it and posted it on RocklandFires.com, a website that I own and operate for the 100% volunteer firefighters of Rockland County. Most people were simply amazed that there was actually a Germonds Fire Department and that I was able to obtain the badge. Shortly after posting the photo on the website I received an e-mail from Ray Guarnuccio, an ex-Chief of the the Spring Valley Department, with a lot more information about the Germonds Fire Department. The members had purchased a used motorized 1922 LaFrance Brockway Torpedo fire truck from the American LaFrance Company. The fire truck had been traded in to American LaFrance by Genesee Hose Company #5 of Wellsville, NY toward the purchase of a new fire truck. The Brockway was stored in a barn on the property of Raymond Palen Sr., one of the organizers of the Fire Protective Association, which was located on West Clarkstown Road north of what is now Bender Road.

The Germonds Fire Protective Association acquired a number of fire gongs that were placed around the hamlet. One of those fire gongs was placed near the barn where their fire truck was being stored. In the 1950’s Raymond Palen Sr. was selling his property on West Clarkstown Road and donated the old fire gong to the Hillcrest Fire Company, which he became a member of after the Germonds Fire Protective Association was absorbed by surrounding fire districts.

In the early 1970s, the Hillcrest Fire Company was looking to build a memorial monument for their past members and incorporated the old Germonds fire gong into the memorial. The monument was located at the companies Mt. Ivy Fire Station located on Thiells Mt. Ivy Road where it hung until 2009 when the fire company decide to build a more formal memorial monument with two larger columns for names, a statue, and a larger fire gong that had been previously donated by the Spring Valley Fire Department in the late 1930’s when they went to an air horn system. The Hillcrest Fire Company graciously donated their old Germonds fire gong to Spring Valley Hook and Ladder Company #1 for its memorial monument where it was mounted in November 2010 at its new home located at 7 West Furman Place in Spring Valley.

After finding out all this new information I decided to share it with the seller, Bill Collins of California. Bill has been collecting badges for most of his life as his family was involved in the business. Bill could not believe the history I had dug up. Shorty after communicating with Bill via e-mail and telephone, he added me to a badge collectors group on Facebook. Bill had posted a photo of the Germonds badge for the other members of the group to see before he listed it for sale on eBay. I decided to make a comment under the photo stating that I was the new owner of the badge and also gave some of the details I had discovered about its history.

Several days after posting my comment, another member of the badge collectors group, Harry Rosenblum, replied to my post indicating that he had purchased the Germonds fire truck in 1972 at a farm stand located on Route 17 in Sloatsburg. Fortunately he still owns the fire truck but unfortunately it has never been restored.