By Deputy Chief Glenn Usdin

Good afternoon.

I’m going to steal something from the old tradition that all brides try to follow when they get dressed on their wedding day.

I’ll l try to tell you Something old, something new, something borrowed and, of course, if you know me, something Jew.

Many years ago Pastor Bushnell’s church bestowed upon the LTFD their annual Robins Nest award for community service.

On a Sunday morning there was a service for us, and that night they invited 10 of us to dinner at the church. We were in the middle of the meal when our pagers alerted me to contact our county dispatcher.

Now for a little background, just 2 weeks earlier the LTFD had assisted a 1200 lb. woman who had become trapped in her home, and we transported her to Hershey Medical center where sadly, she passed away. This had gotten us quite a bit of news coverage.

Now another mid state woman with similar weight problems was in need, and the local FD called Lancaster County and asked if we could come up to their town and render assistance as we did here.

Keith, Ron, myself and 2 others traveled 2 hours through a driving thunderstorm and got to the local ER and helped their folks all night with suggestions and logistics for their very large patient. Sadly, she too died a few days later.

But ever the resourceful guy, Keith saw an opportunity for our department to start a new specialized team and he comes up with great idea to name it…he called it, and I am sorry for being politically incorrect here…the Fat Ass Response Team “well no Keith, can’t really call ourselves that.”

Fast forward a few years to a trip to Portugal.

Sold them fire trucks and developed a sister relationship with a nice city outside of Lisbon. Multiple trips there and made lot of friends.

4 AM driving back to hotel, we see this beautiful mansion and want to check it out. Drive into their driveway, discover its not wide enough for a car, get our rental car completely stuck and scratched from these amazing bushes and shrubbery.

4 of us are laughing so hard in the car, we thought we were gonna throw up. Totally stuck in some millionaires home, inches away from their house. Finally get it out, drive back to our hotel, and both sides of the car are horribly scratched up. Huge deep scratches running down both sides. I am screwed. Going to have to pay for a new paint job on this car!

Keith pulls me aside and says “No problem Chief, I’ll take care of it in the morning!” I went to bed the next morning I go outside and the car looks like brand new. Ron and Keith are eating breakfast and grinning from ear to ear. I’m like…what did you guys do?

Keith says to me…”we’re fine as long as it doesn’t rain before we turn the car in”. They went to the local auto parts store, got a few spray cans of colored auto polish and waxed the car. It looked like new….until the next time it got wet and the polish ran off.

We got on the plane 2 days later and never went back to Portugal. I assume there is a lawsuit or warrant for my arrest somewhere. Thank you Keith for getting me out of there.

Now I need to ask a serious question to all of our firefighters here.

How many have been to a company or department meeting?

Don’t they all seem the same? The names are different, but you say the pledge, recite the financial conditions, reports of committees…you know the drill.

Keith agreed with you.

He was our recording secretary for a number of years. And every meeting, he’d sit a few seats from me, and all through the meeting, he’d be very busy taking notes on everything we were doing and saying. Or so we thought.

One day we needed to verify something from an old meeting and we asked Keith to bring down the monthly minutes. He wasn’t real happy about doing this, and we couldn’t quite figure out why.

Finally, he brought the minutes books down, and we discovered the problem.

For every months meeting, Keith wrote down exactly what he thought of the proceedings.

Here is what the minutes of every month said……Blah-be blah-de blabitty blah blah blah. A few years of Blah. He hadn’t written anything else down.

Now the board wasn’t that thrilled when they heard this, but Keith, I gotta hand it to you, we may have more complete minutes now, but they aren’t as much fun!

And finally, something Jewish.

I am pretty sure that besides my family, we are the only Jews here.

The reason I am so certain is that today is the start of the High Holidays in the Jewish religion.

Starting today, and ending next week, Jews believe that God reviews your good deeds and performance from the last year and decides if you will be included in the Book of Life for the next year.

Tradition states that the closer you get to the high holidays the next year, the more God thought of you. It is my belief that God thought very highly of Keith and brought him right to us on the start of the new year.

For 23 years, every time I saw Keith at a call, the greeting was the same…”Hey Chief, what do you need?”

Today, as we say good bye to our beloved friend Keith, I’ll turn it around and say to Abby and the girls and Nancy and the rest of the family….”what do you need?”

Whatever it is, we are here for you and we honor you for giving the gift of Keith’s love and Friendship.

Thank you.