Firefighter of the year was born to the breed

For Deputy Fire Chief Brad Lovell, fighting fires is a family affair.

Laurel's 2008 Firefighter of the Year grew up following his father, Ted, around the Laurel Volunteer Fire Department firehouse.

"When the siren would go off, the kids would have to get out of the way," Lovell recalled. After the firefighters left on a call, Lovell and the other kids would pick up the shoes their dads tossed while getting dressed and watch TV until their heroes returned.

Fire Chief Richard "Cat" Blankenship has known Lovell since he was a baby. "I remember his mom and her friend would talk and knit" at the firehouse when Ted came for duty, Blankenship said.

The Lovells moved to King George, Va., in 1987 but when Brad moved back to Laurel in 1994 to attend Capitol College, he knew he wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and join the Laurel Fire Department. He did so in 1995.

"I saw Dad do it and I had to do it," Lovell said.

Lovell, 36, is a strong, sturdy man with a Fu Manchu mustache and black hair so closely cropped that, from a distance, his head appears shaved. He says he spends more than 40 hours a week with the department in addition to his job as a radio frequency engineer for AT&T.

Now, 13 years after joining the fire department, Lovell is the highly-decorated Deputy Fire Chief of the same fire department his father has belonged to for 46 years.

On Oct. 4 Lovell was named the city's Firefighter of the Year by a vote of the department's 100-plus members. He accepted the award from Mayor Craig Moe, himself a former fire chief, at the Oct. 4 annual awards banquet at the West Laurel Holiday Inn.

He also won the Chief's Award and the Exceptional Service Award and was named one of the top five non-live-in fire responders at the event.

In previous years Lovell had won the Chief's Award twice and the Exceptional Service Award, but he called the feeling of winning several awards this year "overwhelming."

He earned the Exceptional Service Award for remaining just the opposite -- calm and composed -- during an Aug. 16 call.

Lovell and Assistant Fire Chief Travis Pearcy were training drivers in the department's ladder truck just before 9 p.m. at the intersection of Brooklyn Bridge and Bond Mill roads when they heard a call dispatched to a Laurel Fire Department ambulance over the truck radio. The call concerned a motorcycle accident at the intersection of Bond Mill Road and Ashland Drive, only about a mile from where they were. Lovell and Pearcy realized they were nearby and drove the ladder truck to the accident site.

When Lovell and Pearcy arrived they saw the victim lying face down in the street, covered with a blanket. Lovell immediately assumed the worst.

"When you see someone covered up in the middle of the street at 9 p.m., you assume he's expired," Lovell said.

Lovell and Pearcy ran to the victim and, after finding a pulse in his wrist, called for a Medivac helicopter. Other Laurel firefighters arrived and helped get the victim into an ambulance. Less than 30 minutes after Lovell arrived, the victim was on the helicopter taking off from the soccer fields at Supplee Lane and Brooklyn Bridge Road.

Even with a lifetime's worth of experience and training, Lovell hadn't been through anything like that call.

Lovell said that he didn't know what happened to the victim.

"That's the kind of call that you read about and you never think about it until it really happens," Lovell said. "You react to your training, that's all it is."

Lovell and the team of firefighters who helped get the victim into the helicopter also received the Calvin Lee "Cowboy" Corder Rescue of the Year award at the 86th annual Convention of the Prince George's County Volunteer Fire and Rescue Association in September.

While Lovell cherishes the opportunity to go out and serve his community, he also appreciates the close friendships he's developed at the firehouse.

"Everybody knows everybody," Lovell said of the department. "It's a family here."

For Lovell, this is true both figuratively and literally.

There is, of course, his father, Ted. His mother, Gloria, is a lifetime member of the Auxiliary.

His wife of almost seven years, Janette, is also a member of the Laurel Fire Department. The two met when Lovell, who had joined only a few months before, asked Janette for help studying for EMT class, which she had just completed.

But the family atmosphere at the firehouse transcends mere blood relations.

Sitting at his desk one evening, Lovell smiled as he mentioned how some of the kids of other firefighters call him "Uncle Brad" and his wife "Aunt Janette."

Both Blankenship and Lovell mention the importance of getting children into the firehouse to expose them to the profession, much like Lovell's father did with him.

"That's why you see the lollipops here," Blankenship said, pointing to a jar on his desk.

Blankenship, who said he was on Ted's crew when the elder Lovell lived in Laurel, has helped the younger Lovell grow as a deputy chief.

"His dad trained me and put a lot of time into me. In return, I gave the same back to him," Blankenship said. "I've given him a lot of responsibility in the last two years."

Lovell has more responsibilities at the firehouse these days than he did as a youth picking up shoes, but one thing hasn't changed: He's still following his father.

"My goal is to get my 25 (years, required to be a lifetime member) and be just like my father," Lovell said. "Even to this day, I still look up to everything that my father has done."

---

user comments (0)