For Richard Jones, firefighting was in the blood.
His father was a firefighter until he was 77 and they finally ordered him off the truck, family members said.
Jones was so invested in his volunteer job that when he took his wife, Judy, on vacation, it was to an Ocean City fire convention.
His family had some consolation knowing that Jones, 65, died doing what he loved.
More than two years after he died in his sleep following his shift with a volunteer fire crew in northern Baltimore County, Jones was one of the state?s fallen firefighters and emergency personnel ? more than 350 ? honored Sunday at a memorial dedication in Annapolis.
“It was my husband?s intention to ride until he was 100,” Judy Jones, flanked by family members, said before the services.
The first Maryland Fire-Rescue Services Memorial was set to be unveiled with a procession and program drawing state officials, fallen firefighters? surviving family members and crews statewide, capping nine years of planning, research and fundraising.
Including volunteer crews, more than 130 departments in Maryland have lost a member in the line of duty going back to the 1840s, Deputy State Fire Marshal W. Faron Taylor said. The names are listed on a bronze tablet next to the memorial.
An American flag flew over Calvert Street before the ceremony, strung between the extended ladders of two pieces of fire apparatus ? one a Baltimore-based truck.
Baltimore firefighter and paramedic Michael Hineline leaned against the truck with a group of men from his department and talked about the effect of losing a member, like Lt. Jack Zoppo, who died in 2004.
“He was the epitome of a firefighter,” Hineline said. “Always helping the next guy, always with a smile on his face.”
A memorial can?t compensate for the loss of a colleague, but firefighter Dwayne Booker said the new bronze display in Annapolis “helps keep us out there in people?s minds.”
