Barnesville native ‘firefighter of the year’

Prince George’s County names him volunteer of the year after he saves two adults last summer

Friday, Dec. 29, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo J. Adam Fenster⁄The Gazette Walter ‘‘Joe” Brown, a third-generation firefighter from Barnesville named Volunteer Firefighter of the Year in Prince’s George’s County, holds a photo of his boyhood friend, Cpl. Kirk J. Bosselmann of Dickerson who died during military service in Iraq two years ago. Bosselmann first convinced Brown to join the Upper Montgomery Volunteer Fire Department when they were students at Poolesville High School.

Barnesville native Walter ‘‘Joe” Brown, just 23, has rescued three people from burning buildings in his two years as a volunteer firefighter at the Kentland Volunteer Fire Station in Prince George’s County.

He was honored in September as the volunteer firefighter of the year in Prince George’s County.

Brown also volunteers with the Upper Montgomery Volunteer Fire Department in Beallsville — where he started his services as a high school senior — and is a paid career firefighter in Washington, D.C., at the station on 49th Street in Northeast, one of the busiest in the city.

With each rescue he has made, Brown said he recalls his hero and best friend: 2001 Poolesville High School graduate Cpl. Kirk J. Bosselmann of Dickerson who at age 21 was killed in Iraq on Nov. 27, 2004.

‘‘He’s my hero, for sure,” Brown said. ‘‘I gather all of my strength from what he’s taught me.”

It was Bosselmann who encouraged Brown to volunteer at the Beallsville station in high school. He did and hasn’t looked back.

‘‘The big question people ask firefighters is if we’re scared,” Brown said during a recent interview at the Beallsville station. ‘‘When I think about what [members of the armed forces do] when they’re kicking down doors that could have grenades attached, it puts firefighting in a different light. ... It doesn’t negate what we do, but it puts it in perspective.”

‘‘Firefighters are the hometown heroes, but the guys over there are the country’s heroes,” he said.

Brown said it’s hard not to think of his friend, who served two tours in Iraq and was killed while scouting for a sniper in Fallujah.

‘‘When you’re fighting a fire, you know what to expect and how to get away from it,” he explained. ‘‘But you can’t run away from an IED or a roadside bomb.”

Brown comes to his dedication to firefighting honestly. His grandfather, Walter Stottlemyer Sr., is a nearly 50-year veteran of the volunteer department in Beallsville. And Brown’s uncle Walter ‘‘Ty” Stottlemyer Jr. was awarded the Montgomery County Gold Medal of Valor after rescuing three children from a Gaithersburg house fire in 1998.

‘‘I’ve grown up all around it,” said Joe Brown’s mother, Bonnie Brown. ‘‘I wasn’t surprised when he wanted to be a firefighter.”

Her son, she said, sought out a job at the Kentland station on his own, without consulting his parents.

‘‘He wanted to be where the action was,” she said. ‘‘He went down there and introduced himself and said ‘I want to join.’”

Uncle Ty Stottlemyer, a county career firefighter who lives in Poolesville, said it’s not uncommon for members of the same family to join fire or police departments.

Walter Stottlemyer Sr. said he didn’t encourage his son or his grandson to join the department, but let them each make the decision on their own. Like his grandson, he said, Stottlemyer Sr. ‘‘lived and breathed the fire department” upon joining.

‘‘He doesn’t brag on it,” Stottlemyer Sr. said. ‘‘He wants to do a great job, and be the first one there and the last one to leave if necessary.”

That kind of dedication gives Joe Brown the chance to experience a variety of calls.

‘‘The opportunity or chance to make a rescue for a working firefighter is pretty rare,” Ty Stottlemyer said. ‘‘He puts himself in the position to increase the odds. Obviously, the more incidents that you run, the more likely you will have a rescue.”

The first time Joe Brown pulled someone out of a house was in the early morning hours one day in November 2005.

‘‘I was sound asleep in my room” at the station, he recalled. ‘‘I pretty much woke up and I was on the truck. Sometimes it just happens like that.”

Three children were trapped in a Landover Hills house, which was engulfed in flames.

‘‘I knew if I could get through the hallway and away from the fire, I’d be OK,” Brown said.

There was nothing in the first room he searched. As he searched the second room, he heard a moan and found a 6-year-old boy wedged between the wall and a bed.

He grabbed the boy and realized flames had cut off his exit. He began searching for a window.

He found one at the rear of the house at which fellow firefighters had placed a ladder. He handed the boy out to them and then returned to his mission.

‘‘I went back in and finished the search,” Brown said.

A 3-year-old, who was believed to have been playing with a lighter, and an elderly man died from injuries they sustained in the blaze.

Brown earned the county’s Fire and EMS Department Silver Medal of Valor for his efforts in that fire.

And just a few months after being honored, he made two more rescues.

In June, he rescued a woman from her apartment in Kentland, and in August, he rescued an elderly man from another Kentland blaze. That man later died.

Firefighting has become something that Brown can’t imagine leaving.

‘‘After the first call, I was hooked,” Brown said. ‘‘I went from thinking it was something I could never stomach, to something I couldn’t ever leave.”