Two former officers with the Maryland Natural Resources Police shared a love of the outdoors and helping people, but in their service both died in the line of duty.
“He was a good husband, good father and loved fishing and doing yard work,” said Pat Thompson, of Adamstown, about her father, Officer Leo Friend.
“We used to always tease him about moving dirt. If he didn?t have anything else to do, he?d go move dirt.”
Maryland Natural Resources Police, the law enforcement arm of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, honored Friend and Ranger Joseph Carr for dying while in the line of duty.
Their names joined six others on a stone memorial unveiled Sunday at Gwynnbrook State Game Farm Central Regional Office in Owings Mills.
“We?re fortunate that during our long history, we?ve haven?t had somebody die in the line of duty for a long, long while,” said Sgt. Ken Turner, a police spokesman.
Carr, a park ranger at the Patapsco Valley State Park in Howard, started his career with the Maryland Park Service in 1968. He died from a heart attack while making an arrest in April 1978.
“I remember him every day of my life,” said his wife, Gertrude Carr, of Ellicott City.
“We had to camp in the forest and not in a camp because we had two basset hounds. He was the kind of person who when he saw someone having trouble, he would go over and help them.”
Friend began his service in Garrett in 1948 as a game warden and wildlife officer, said Natural Resources historian Lt. Greg Bartles.
Friend died in 1971 after being infected with Staphylococcus aureus bacteria while working with animals. His death was just recognized as a “line-of-duty death,” Bartles said.
The ceremony also recognized the Maryland Natural Resource Police?s 140th anniversary, making it the oldest state law enforcement body in Maryland.
The agency began in 1868 as the State Oyster Police, regulating the oyster industry in the Chesapeake Bay.
