Karl Thuge, firetruck salesman, volunteer firefighter, dies at 97

They say fight fire with fire. Massapequa’s Karl Thuge fought fire with firetrucks, selling them to virtually every fire department on Long Island in a career stretching back to the 1940s.

He devised lifesaving improvements to them, and pushed to transition the industry from gasoline to more powerful diesel engines. And he helped to break the color barrier in then-segregated communities by selling to minority-run fire departments.

As well, he served on those trucks, in a 79-year career as a volunteer firefighter who rose to become chief of department in Lynbrook and afterward serving in the Massapequa Fire Department, working rescue operations worthy of an adventure novel.

His perspective from both sides of the equipment equation led him to suggest practical enhancements.

“Things that he developed in the '50s, '60s and '70s are now in use on firetrucks all over the country,” said Glenn Usdin, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who Thuge (pronounced TOO-ghee) took under his wing decades ago as both a Mack Trucks salesperson and a Massapequa firefighter himself.

Noting that every firetruck is custom-designed, Usdin said Thuge “was extremely instrumental in the way hoses were laid out on the fire trucks, so that [firefighters] would be quicker to advance onto the hoses.” And Thuge convinced departments not to let firefighters ride standing on the back steps of moving trucks, from where hundreds had fallen off nationwide over the years, and instead “to put a bench seat on top of the hose bed.”

Thuge died of congestive heart failure at home on Sept. 29. He was 97.

“He took a nap and never woke up. It was very, very peaceful,” said one of his daughters, Laura Thuge Marletta, of Massapequa. “He passed in my arms. My head was on the pillow next to him.” Another of Thuge’s four children, son Karl Henry Thuge, also of Massapequa, was present as well.

“He pulled so many people out of fires. He was my hero,” Marletta said. Yet as with any first-responder family, “I was always concerned when he left the house because of the things that might happen.” Indeed, for example, “There was a fire in Massapequa and a child was trapped in it. My dad threw a ladder up, went in through the window and pulled the child out. But the child did not make it, and my father burnt his lungs pretty bad.”

In 1950, as a fledgling volunteer, Thuge was one of hundreds of firefighters who responded to the collision of two Long Island Rail Road trains near Rockville Centre, in which 32 people were killed and several dozen injured.

Yet there were countless successful rescues and extinguished fires as well. In April 1965, Thuge photo appeared on the front page of the New York Daily News, comforting a woman critically injured when a stalker tried to abduct her outside a Lynbrook shopping center. In February 1968, he was one of three firefighters who rescued a 9-year-old boy who had fallen through the ice of Jones Creek in John J. Burns Park in Massapequa, along with two would-be rescuers, including a police officer, who also had fallen in.

Karl Thuge, who had no middle name, was born April 2, 1928, in Mineola, the third child and only son of Danish immigrants Karl Julius Thuge and Marie K. Lassen Thuge. The family moved to Manhasset when he was an infant, and in 1939 settled in Lynbrook, where Karl graduated from Lynbrook High School in 1946.

Impassioned about firefighting since childhood, he joined the Lynbrook Fire Department as soon as he turned 18. In 1964, he served as department chief for a year before moving with his family to Massapequa in 1966 and serving for decades there. 

He married Estrid Leibbrandt on June 21, 1958 — a year after having sold a pumper truck to the fire department in Great River, where her father was fire commissioner. The couple’s passions included boating and travel; their home had a slip with 200 feet of bulkhead and a private beach, their daughter said.

After leaving Mack Trucks circa 1978, Thuge formed Firefighting Productions to sell firetrucks. He later worked in sales for Nassau Fire Apparatus and finally the fire rescue equipment company Hendrickson. While that firm threw him a retirement party in the mid-2010s, Usdin said, Thuge continued to sell a truck here and there afterward. Thuge retired from active firefighting in 1989, but continued to be a member of the Massapequa Fire Department.

In addition to his daughter and son, Thuge is survived by daughters Karen Thuge Gordon, of Amityville, and Susan Thuge Carlino, of East Moriches; nine grandchildren, including firefighters/paramedics Nina Cirella and Douglas O’Leary; and six great-grandchildren.

Visitation was held Oct. 3, at the Massapequa Funeral Home’s North Chapel, in Massapequa Park, with Firematic services the next day at Community United Methodist Church, also in Massapequa Park.

“As far as my eyes could see, down Park Boulevard, there were fire trucks,” Marletta said.

Thuge was cremated and buried at Grace Episcopal Church Cemetery in Massapequa.

“I've given three eulogies in my life,” Usdin said. “First for my father, then for my mother, and then for Karl. And Karl’s was the most difficult one of all.”