The Dan Leghorn Fire Engine Company is hosting the parade and celebrating its 75th anniversary, too.
By Nancy Peckenham
This Saturday, volunteer firefighters from all over Orange County and beyond will converge on the town of Newburgh where they will march down Route 52 to Algonquin Park for an annual celebration.
Members of the Orange County Volunteer Firemen’s Association have paraded through towns throughout the county since 1915, the year the organization first formed. This year, the firefighters are coming to the Dan Leghorn Fire Company on South Plank Road, which is marking the 75th anniversary of its founding.
Arthur Lanzer, an 17-year member of the company, is in charge of working out the details for this year’s week-long convention that culminates with the parade of 50 fire departments on Saturday, September 25th. In an interview at the firehouse recently, he talked about the research he did on the founder, local businessman Dan Leghorn, and the myriad details that go into planning the event.
Art Lanzer with a 1914 article from the Newburgh Journal about the cottage fire at Orange Lake.
Until Leghorn started the fire company in 1935, the area around Orange Lake was served by a bucket brigade, a group of volunteers who literally passed buckets of water to try to extinguish a fire, Lanzer said. The destruction of two summer cottages at the lake summer highlighted the need for a more modern fire company and the owner of two of the cottages destroyed by fire, Dr. Henry Stock, offered to purchase the equipment needed.
However, it took two decades before Dan Leghorn, whose family had a long involvement with the city of Newburgh fire department, invited local residents to his store on Lakeside Road At that meeting, the seeds were sown for the new fire company. Six months later, Leghorn died unexpectedly and the new fire company was named in his honor.
Lanzer said after its founding, members responded to fires with hand pumps to fill buckets of water and that it was until the 1940s that it purchased it first fire engine truck.
Daniel Leghorn founded the company bearing his name in 1935.
Aware that the 75th anniversay was approaching, Art Lanzer said company members began nearly ten years ago to look into where Leghorn is buried. They finally found his gravesite at Calvary Cemetery and started to raise $5,000 to buy a tombstone for it. On Sunday, September 19th as the celebratory week kicked off, members of the fire company were joined by local elected officials at a memorial service for Dan Leghorn at the cemetery .
As this year’s host, the fire company has had to raise funds for lots of other activities, including the production of memorablia coins and pins and more than 50 trophies, as well as food and refreshment for the out-of-town firefighters. Lanzer said the company, which has 60 members, has been renting out its meeting space at the firehouse, a task spearheaded by Sue Carroll that has brought in nearly $30,000.
The Orange County Volunteer Firemans Association Commemorative Coin.
Lanzer says that the planning for this year’s convention and parade has benefited from the many hours of labor of company members, including Charles Piper, Vincent and Patrick Cadden and Sam Van Wart, among others. Lanzer said that former fire chief Piper was particularly helpful in coordinating with police officials for the parade, which will shut down portions of Route 300 and Route 52 in Newburgh at the height of a typically busy Saturday.
The public is invited to watch the Orange County Volunteer Firemen’s Association Parade on Saturday.. The parade steps off at 2 pm.
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