4-03-2025 4:50am

Gary Conrad Named Boyertown Area 2025 First Responder of the Year

Lesley Misko Editor

by Lesley Misko

There is no mistaking the caring and humility in the voice of the 2025 Boyertown Area First Responder, Gary Conrad. A 1973 BASH graduate, Conrad has lived in the Boyertown area almost his entire life.

Informed about his selection as First Responder while working his part time job at A.D. Moyer, Conrad describes feeling concerned that he had done something wrong when Mark Malizzi, First Responder Chaplain, and Roger Lehmann, Boyertown Area Fire and Rescue President, came to see him and said, “We have to talk to you about something.” He recalls thinking to himself, “I’m a quiet guy and I mostly keep to myself. Why would he need to speak to me?” When Malizzi told him the reason for the visit, Conrad was startled. He confesses, “I think of myself as a “worker bee,” who is “just following the calling given to him by the Lord.” That calling has taken him through a remarkable 52 years in fire service.

To some extent, Conrad feels he was destined to become a firefighter. His father and uncle were firemen, and the latter served as fire chief. When Conrad was six years old his father took him along to the local fire house as he often did, but this time his dad put him down on the front seat of a 941 Mack Pumper truck and “that’s where it all started.”

Conrad pursued over 2000 hours of training in various venues. He explains, “Basic training takes place ‘in house,’ where certified instructors are brought in, for example, to teach CPR.” Beyond that, there are Fire Academies in Lewisburg, outside of Reading, and Montgomery and Chester Counties. Conrad is proud to have attended the National Fire Academy, located in Maryland. It provides specialized training and advanced management programs for middle and top-level fire officers.

Regardless of how much training a fire fighter has, Conrad believes “you must have a calling to fight fires. You must recognize the danger of the situation. It is essential to rely on one another. Someone has to go first. You can’t save someone’s life from outside a building.” With emotion, he reveals having lost two close friends on the job. “Sometimes it costs us,” he acknowledges.

In 1972 Conrad began serving with Boyertown’s Friendship Hook and Ladder, but two years later he joined the Navy, remaining in the service until 1980. Still, he managed to stay involved when he was home on leave. Following that, he worked for the Pottstown Fire Department until 1992, eventually moving to the Upper Pottsgrove Fire Department. While there, he served as Fire Chief for four years and was honored as Firefighter of the Year in 1991. He returned to Boyertown in 2003.

In 2015, Conrad describes a merger that took place between three Boyertown Fire Companies: Friendship Hook and Ladder, Keystone Steam Fire Company, New Berlinville (Liberty) Fire Company. The merged department is called Boyertown Area Fire and Rescue (BAFR), but Keystone Steam withdrew from the group years ago. Conrad has been a firefighter and driver with BAFR, earning the Commissioner's Award for his unwavering commitment.

Changes have been plentiful during Conrad’s lengthy career. He notes that there has been colossal growth in the number of area homes and corresponding population. Conrad provides the astounding statistic that when he began in 1972, the department received maybe 50 calls per year. Now they received almost 700 calls per year. He points out that they also provide EMS rescues and they “still rescue cats in trees!”

Conrad is extremely concerned about a decline in the number of people volunteering. “Volunteerism has been dropping since the late 1980s,” he states, suggesting that rigorous liability and training requirements are some of the reasons. “You must have 180 hours of training just to run with the fire department, and weekend fire school is hard on families.”

Another change is that many of the people moving to the area do not realize that the local fire fighters are all volunteer— not salaried employees as is the case in more urban locations. Conrad doesn’t know when it will happen, but given the decline in volunteers, he is certain that at some future time, volunteer firefighters will no longer exist, and all firefighters will be salaried. He would like to see young people step up more. On a recent late-night call, he looked around and realized all who had responded, except for one person, were over 50 years old.

As for all the families of firefighters, Conrad’s volunteerism is hard on his wife, who is a trained EMT, and his daughter Amanda, who is an English teacher at the Hill School. He knows that all families of firefighters live with the fear that their loved one could suffer serious injuries… or worse. “You tell them you love them and leave the rest to the good Lord,” he says.

Putting himself in danger does not discourage Gary Conrad from fulfilling what he feels are his responsibilities to others. “I’m here because of my brothers and sisters in the fire service. Someone has to have your back. It’s the right thing to do and it is a very humbling experience.”