By Mary McCarty Updated 1:30 AM Thursday, December 31, 2009

Like most 7-year-old girls, Michaela Dunkman believed that “Daddy was invincible.”

On Sept. 30, 1951, she learned the hard truth.

Michaela and her mother, Elizabeth, had been attending Mass when Dayton police officers came into the church to tell them that Clarence Irvin Dunkman had been severely injured in a warehouse fire started by four young boys. “I remember riding in the police car to St. Elizabeth Hospital, but by the time we got there he already passed away,” recalled Michaela Dunkman Lanter, now 65, of Beavercreek. “My mom went into hysterics and they told her she couldn’t go in there, but she went flying and broke in anyway.”

Elizabeth Dunkman was left to raise the couple’s five children on her own. The youngest, Paul, only 11 months old at the time, has no memories of his father but “he has always been present in thoughts, words and actions.” Now, Dunkman’s two surviving children feel proud his name will be part of a public sculpture being planned for Stubbs Park in Centerville to honor the 58 Miami Valley firefighters who have died in the line of duty.

Retired Dayton firefighter Rod Longpre said the Miami Valley Firefighter/EMS Memorial Association he co-founded is “very, very close” to beginning construction after nearly 20 years of fundraising. Before noon on Dec. 24 — the day the Dayton Daily News published an article about the memorial — a local company called Longpre with the promise of a $5,000 matching grant. Later that day Houser Asphalt & Concrete of Dayton offered to donate the concrete and gravel.

“It makes me feel very humbled that people in the private sector would want to help us,” Longpre said. “All this time the firefighters were doing it on our own, and it turns out all we had to do was ask.”

Fallen firefighter’s children still ‘family’

It is nearly 60 years since her father died, battling a warehouse fire in the Oregon District, and Fire Station 4 doesn’t look anything like the turn-of-the-century firehouse that Michaela Dunkman Lanter visited so often as a little girl.

The location at Main and Monument remains the same, but everything else has changed. Yet when the Beavercreek woman visits the firehouse with her brother, Paul Dunkman, 59, there’s an immediate sense they’re among family.

The only surviving children of fallen firefighter Clarence Irvin Dunkman are treated like visiting royalty. Lanter can point out the spot where her versatile father once cooked for the other men, and where he would repair their uniforms.

Brother and sister talk shop with Lt. Robert D. Cockayne, whose father, retired Capt. Robert C. Cockayne, served with Dunkman at the time of his death in 1951. “Firefighters are very tradition-based,” Cockayne said, “and when someone passes away, that’s part of our family. They’re never forgotten.”

The firefighters at Station 4 want the rest of the community to remember, too. That’s why they’ve supported the 19-year quest of now-retired Dayton firefighter Rod Longpre to build the Miami Valley Firefighter/EMS Memorial.

“Rod is passionate about this,” noted Assistant Fire Chief Jeff Payne. “Ever since I’ve know him, he has put in his own time and money.”

Steve King, spokesman for the memorial association, said he is dumfounded by the response to a Dec. 24 Dayton Daily News article. “Nobody had any expectations for immediate results,” King said. “We hoped it would help our fundraising.” King said the firefighters need to raise $10,000 to $15,000 to begin construction; they won’t be far from that goal if they can meet the matching grant. In addition, they need to raise $20,000 endowment for the sculpture which will be installed at Stubbs Park in Centerville. Celebrated Yellow Springs artist Jon Barlow Hudson has won the commission to create the sculpture he will call “Fire Wall.”

Jane Black, director of the Dayton Visual Arts Center, served on the jury that selected Hudson. At first, Black felt disturbed by Hudson’s model: “I think my initial comment was ‘I wouldn’t walk into that, it feels hot, referring to the plaza he had proposed. However, I awoke in the middle of the night, having had a clear vision of being in that space, looking at the light shining through the cutout of the firefighter in one of the triangular uprights. It was as if I was in a burning building — trapped, hot, terrified — and had just seen the person who would save my life. And suddenly, that memorial seemed exactly right.”

It’s a fitting tribute, in other words, for the men and women whose loss sends ripples through the generations. “I was just a baby when he died, and I have no memory of my father,” said Paul Dunkman, a grocer who owns the Anna Market. “But I don’t feel cheated. The kids who are cheated are the ones who don’t know who their fathers are. I knew who my father was.”

Dunkman’s widow, Elizabeth, taught him to cherish his memory. She heroically worked every imaginable job — from seamstress to baker to pizza maker — to hold her family together. “She never wanted to marry again,” Lanter said of her mother, who died in 1997. “They fell in love when they were young, and she couldn’t deal with the thought of loving another man.”

Dunkman wishes he could talk to the four young boys — now senior citizens — who started the fire that killed his father. Not for retribution, but quite the opposite: “I want them to know I don’t hold anything against them.”

Concurred Lanter, “They did not mean for that to happen. They were just kids being kids.”

Lanter believes her father would have felt the same way: “He was kind and gentle and very giving to anyone who needed it.”

This is one story among 58. Yet the story of Clarence Dunkman is the story, in microcosm, of the firefighters’ memorial.

For his spirit clearly lives on in his children, in his fellow firefighters, and in the community he died trying to protect.

This is a great retrospective story. It also shows the dedication of the firefighter community and others to build the Miami Valley Firefighter/EMS Memorial.

I'm very glad to see that this memorial is coming closer to reality. They group that has been working to build it has been diligent and patient. I will be very pleased to provide pictures and possibly a timeline of the building process once it begins.