"Around 2004, I (former Chief Ed Schneider) with former Chief Thomas Hughes started placing firefighter flags on graves of deceased Brewster firefighters before Memorial Day. At first, there were not too many to deal with in St. Lawrence Cemetery, Miltown Cemetery, Raymond Hill Cemetery in Carmel, and St. Peter's Cemetery in Mill Plain." ( paraphrasing article written by Ed Schneider)

Ed decided to find more deceased members of the Brewster Fire Department. He began this herculean task by first searching all the Brewster Fire Department records since its inception in 1870 to the present. "Some were difficult to read because of the hand writing." Afterwards, he listed all members from 1870 to the present. Next, he had to find where they were buried. He went to the Brewster Library to go through all the Brewster Standard newspapers from 1870 to 1945. Afterwards, he consulted with Beecher Funeral Home as well as Cemetery.com on the Internet. He found a total of 376 members of which 321 had flags placed on them.

Towners, Patterson, Pawling, Peach Lake, North Salem, Somers, Mt. Kisco, Bedford, Sandy Hook and Dover Plains were some of the additional cemeteries that had markers and flags planted. This number has slowly been increasing. Some deceased members were without gravestones, so Ed created concrete markers with their names on it. He made up a list of all members, their years of service, and when they died. He organized deceased members by cemeteries and their location in those cemeteries. (photo #5)

Besides deceased members and their respective cemeteries, Ed created a museum in the firehouse. In this museum there are albums with newspaper articles covering the Brewster Fire Department from the 1960's to 2010. There are also albums of pictures dating from the 1980's to 20010 of department members engaged in activities. There are shelves of old equipment, trophies, badges, helmets from the past. (photos 6-16)

This tradition continues today. In 2024 a total of 25 locations and 347 flags were placed on deceased members grave sites by the grave crew. The words above and pictures below are inadequate to describe the effort put in by HISTORIAN Ed Schneider. After seventy-one (71) years of service to the Brewster Fire Department, Ed died on February 7, 2021, due to complications from COVID-19. (Photo #17)