For local first responders, ceremony for fallen heroes a teaching moment
SOUTH COATESVILLE >> Members of the Chester County first responders’ community, fire, police, ambulance and rescue companies, gathered at the county Public Safety Training Center to remember, and to make sure future generations do, too.
The Lionville Fire Company added three plaques on Thursday to the center’s Garden of Honor memorializing three men from the company who died in the line of duty, but whose death leave lessons for those currently serving or who will serve in the future.
“You hear guys in the fire service, in the military, say, ‘Lest we forget,’” Lionville Deputy Chief William Minahan told the assembled participants at the memorial ceremony, which included relatives of the three men who died. “It speaks volumes to me.”
Minahan recounted how the circumstances surrounding the death of the men — Firefighter Charles H. Martin, Jr., killed in the line of duty on Sept. 1, 1965; Firefighter Jonathan S. Windle, Jr., killed in the line of duty on Nov. 1, 1966; and Firefighter David J. Good, who was killed in the line of duty on March 9, 1998 — became teaching moments to keep first responders safe.
He said that since those deaths occurred, people check to see if there are downed power lines near an open fire; that the ladders they put on burning structures are the proper height; and that they have safe barricades while responding to automobile crashes on busy roadways.
“I know in the back of my head that these lessons have been learned,” Minahan said.
But moreover, he said in his brief remarks, by installing the memorial plaques at the center — moving them away from the shade of a tree outside the Historic Chester County Courthouse in West Chester, where few saw them — incoming trainees can hear heir stories and learn from their tragic deaths.
“Now, when kids come here — 16, 17, 18 year old kids — to learn to be a fireman, they can see that guys lost their lives doing this,” said Minahan, who was joined in remarks by Gerry Lindenlauf, deputy director for Public Safety Training, Jack Sullivan, Director of Training for the Emergency Responder Safety Institute, Kevin Pierce, South Coatesville Chief of Police, and Chaplin Jerry Schwartz of the West Chester Fire Department.
“You don’t leave in the morning thinking, ‘I’m not going to make it back today.’ But it does happen,” Minahan said.
Martin was a Uwchlan township supervisor, a wellknown Lionville farmer, and a civic leader when he died.
He was electrocuted after climbing over a barbed wire fence that had been touched by a downed 44,000-volt power line, going to fight a brush fire, a common occurrence in those days. He left behind his wife and three children.
Windle was 39 and a Navy veteran of World War II. At the time of his death, he was in the active reserves with the naval Reserve Helicopter
Squadron at Willow Grove. He was killed after falling from a ladder while working with other volunteers on construction of an addition to the Lionville firehouse. He left behind his wife and two children.
For the current members of the company, March 9 will always be a day to remember Good, however. He had been part of a number of firefighters and rescuers who had
gone to the turnpike to help motorists injured in a multivehicle crash there, not far from the Downingtown interchange, While they were loading the injured into ambulances, a tractor trailer lost control and slammed into the assembled crew.
Good, 36, was killed, and nine others were injured.
The honor plaque tradition
for those first responders killed in the line of duty was initiated in 2009 by Magisterial District Judge John Bailey of West Whiteland, a former head of the county’s Fraternal Order of Police lodge. Bailey was in attendance Thursday.