SOUTH KINGSTOWN –– Several hundred firefighters from Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York, along with dozens of friends and relatives, gathered at the University of Rhode Island Saturday morning to pay their respects to Allan “Pickles” LePage, a longtime volunteer firefighter who died Tuesday of injuries suffered at the Kingston Fire District station.

The four men who delivered eulogies described a cigar-loving “fireman’s fireman” who at first glance seemed like a “grumpy old man” but who became a beloved mentor to young firefighters and a “brother” to firefighters everywhere.

Mixing tears and laughter, speakers recalled “Pic” sinking chest-deep into the snow on a winter hike because he thought his snowshoes weren’t needed, driving himself to the hospital with one hand submerged in a bucket of water because he had accidentally burned it, and leaving his false teeth on the wood stove whenever he slept at the station. Once someone lit the stove and the teeth melted.

LePage, 67, of South Kingstown, suffered a head injury whose cause is still being investigated. He was found Monday afternoon bleeding heavily in the bucket of a fire truck’s ladder tower. LePage, a volunteer for 42 years, was responsible for maintaining the district’s apparatus.

On Saturday, an antique fire truck lent by the Providence Fire Department carried LePage’s casket under an arch formed by two ladder trucks with an American flag suspended between them. Led by two bagpipers and a drummer, the procession marched between rows of uniformed men and women lining