By Michael Dresser
The Baltimore Sun
BALTIMORE COUNTY, Md. — On a perfect spring day in Baltimore County, surrounded by hundreds of his brother and sister firefighters and mourned in prayers thousands of years old, a hero was laid to rest Sunday.
Gene M. Kirchner, the 25-year-old Reisterstown volunteer firefighter who died Thursday at Maryland Shock Trauma Center of injuries suffered when he tried in vain to rescue a man trapped in a burning home, was buried in front of the Fallen Heroes Memorial at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens after funeral services at Har Sinai Congregation in Owings Mills.
Firefighters from as far away as North Carolina and New York crowded the synagogue, lined the procession route and saluted the casket at graveside before their comrade was buried. They came to say farewell to a young man whose sister remembered him as a “fun uncle,” whose friends remembered him as the kid who always wore green so he could be distinguished from his twin brother and whose chief simply called him a hero.
Full story: Firefighter laid to rest in service steeped in tradition