Richard Kroebel, volunteer firefighter with West Babylon department, dies at 70

Starting as a high school cadet and progressing through the ranks to chief of department, volunteer firefighter Richard Kroebel, of Islip Terrace, was all about the job behind the Thin Red Line.

"Being a firefighter for him was a special calling," said one of his sisters, Catherine Kroebel MacArthur. Echoed his son, Richie Kroebel Jr., "He was devoted to the West Babylon Fire Department, doing anything he could for it."

Like all volunteer firefighters, Richard Kroebel worked a regular job in addition to his firehouse duties. Yet even before his employment as first an overnight security guard at what was then the Sperry Gyroscope Corp. in Lake Success, and later as a union steamfitter, he knew his calling.

"He started with the Junior Fire Brigade in high school," said his son, referring to what is now the West Babylon Fire Department Mustangs, a group for 11- to 17-year-olds in the fire district who learn first aid, how to don protective equipment and breathing gear, and techniques for such skills as search and rescue, emergency evacuation and automobile extractions. "He was one of the first few members" of the organization, his son said.

Kroebel died July 31 at age 70, at the Mary Ann Tully Hospice Inn in Melville, following complications from a fall down stairs at home and subsequent pneumonia.

"I spent time with him prior to his fall," said his longtime friend Steven Kamalic, the current chief of department, "and Rich’s big thing is to take care of the [firehouse] members and the community. ... He would say, 'Take care of the members, and then the response by the community will always fall in place.'"

The second of five children and the only boy, Richard Peter Kroebel Sr. was born Nov. 4, 1954, in Englewood, New Jersey, the son of Harold Augustus Kroebel and Carole Elaine Galla Kroebel.

Harold, an efficiency expert, moved for work several times in his career, and Richard was raised in Englewood, then Detroit for a year, then Elkhart, Indiana, during kindergarten, and finally West Babylon beginning in the early 1960s. In that hamlet, his mother began a longtime position as a nurse’s assistant at West Babylon Junior High School.

After Richard’s graduation from West Babylon Senior High School and entering the work world, he joined the fire department in 1974, stationed at Engine Company No. 2.

He served as captain of that house from 1980-82, and entered the chief's office in 1990. There, following the standard pattern, he did two-year stints as 3rd assistant chief, 2nd assistant chief and 1st assistant chief before becoming chief of department from 1996-98, overseeing multiple firehouses in the hamlet.

Kroebel remained with the department until he retired in 2016, concurrently serving as a commissioner in the West Babylon Fire District from 2004-14. In retirement, he worked as an estimator for a contracting company. Additionally, he was a trustee of the West Babylon Fire Department Benevolent Association.

Kroebel was married three times. His first marriage, to Karen Stirling Kroebel, produced son Richie Jr. His second was to Sharon Dunlop Kroebel. Both marriages ended in divorce. On Oct. 19, 2019, he married Carol Ceddia Kroebel, and the two moved to Islip Terrace.

"He was great," she recalled. "... We always laughed and went places, vacations. We had a lot of friends and we were always out having fun." He loved her two grown daughters, she added, and his grandchildren.

For recreation, his son said, he played golf at courses, including Timber Point in Great River and Bergen Point in West Babylon, and fished.

Aside from his wife, his son, of West Babylon, and his sister, of Jersey City, he is survived by sisters Chris Miller and Karen Treiber, both of Virginia, and Mary Kroebel, of Bohemia; stepdaughters Stephanie Santerre and Carrie Kuhn; and six grandchildren.

Visitation was held Aug. 5 at Claude R. Boyd-Spencer Funeral Home in Babylon, with firematic honors there that evening. Kroebel was cremated.