Lauren Bennett, a firefighter for the Kingston Fire District, carries a black wreath outside Kingston Fire District headquarters Tuesday. It didn’t take long for word to spread throughout town and in firefighting circles of the fatal accident.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

SOUTH KINGSTOWN — Allan “Pickles” LePage, 67, a volunteer firefighter for 42 years and mentor to hundreds of volunteer firefighters who went on to become professional firefighters or volunteers in their own communities, died Tuesday morning of injuries suffered Monday in the Kingston Fire District station.

At a news conference, Deputy Chief Steven Pinch of the Union Fire Department, his badge covered by a black mourning band, read a statement on behalf of Kingston Fire Chief Nathan Barrington announcing LePage’s death.

LePage, who lived on Liberty Lane in South Kingstown, was the maintenance coordinator for the Kingston department, which is on the edge of the University of Rhode Island campus. The Union Fire Department serves all of South Kingstown except the campus area.

Officials said LePage was alone in the station, working in one of the equipment bays, when he was injured at about 2:30 p.m. Monday. Investigators were still trying to determine what happened and they provided no details.

The South Kingstown police are investigating in cooperation with the state Occupational Safety Unit — part of the state’s Department of Labor and Training — and representatives of Public Safety Training, a Connecticut company.

Fire officials said a firefighter found LePage and began administering first aid. He was taken first to South County Hospital and then, by helicopter, to Rhode Island Hospital. A spokeswoman there said he died at 10:49 a.m. Tuesday.

By noon Tuesday, the flag at the Kingston station had been lowered to half staff. Ladder 1 from the Union Fire Department arrived so that volunteers could hang purple-and-black bunting over the bay for Ladder 2, the truck on which he usually served.

The truck was not there. Officials said it had been secured elsewhere as part of the investigation.

Volunteers hung bunting and consoled one another. Some had large cigars in their mouths — a tribute to LePage, who had been an avid cigar smoker.

LePage’s maintenance counterpart in the Union Fire Department spent the afternoon visiting that department’s eight fire stations to lower their flags to half-staff, Pinch said.

Most people knew LePage as “Pickles” before learning his real name.

Pinch said he heard LePage’s wife, Diane, tell a firefighter that he got the name at a baseball game when someone pointed him out and said he was a pickle. LePage answered, saying, “I’m a sour pickle,” and the name stuck, Pinch said.

Friends remembered him as a strong character in a small town, a gruff man who mellowed over the years. It didn’t take long for word to spread throughout town and in firefighting circles of the accident and then later the word of his death.

Aside from volunteering for the fire district, LePage worked for nearly 25 years for the Kingston Water District, retiring in 2004. Henry Meyer, the water district manager, described him as very dependable.

“If you had to ‘Pick’ somebody to get you out of a jam, it would be him,” Meyer said. “I don’t know how many fires he went to over the years but it was a lot, and that speaks more to the man than anything else. How many people do volunteer work in the first place, let alone four decades?”

Charlestown police Lt. Patrick J. McMahon said LePage had been a father figure for decades to many volunteers who moved on to full-time positions in Providence, Cranston, Warwick and Johnston.

“He was very dedicated to the fire service,” said Providence Battalion Fire Chief James Mirza, who was a URI student in the 1970s when he joined the Kingston department. “He liked things to be done right. He was very conscientious. He had that real long-term commitment to it, longer than anyone I’ve ever known.”

Longtime friend Dale Evans, who volunteers with the West Kingston Fire Department, part of the Union district, said LePage loved firefighting. “He loved it, loved it, loved it,” Evans said. He also loved to hunt, bagging a moose, a caribou and a grizzly bear on two hunting trips to Alaska, Evans said.

Aside from his wife, LePage is survived by a son, also named Allan.

Funeral arrangement have not yet been finalized.

–– With staff reports from Amanda Milkovits

dnaylor@projo.com