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 the driveway to URI’s Ryan Center.

At the request of LePage’s widow, Diane LePage, a chartered bus brought the wives and significant others of firefighters attending the ceremony, according to Charlestown Fire Lt. Patrick McMahon, spokesman for the ceremony.

The casket was draped with a Kingston Fire District flag, which was folded and replaced with an American flag just before the funeral began. The Rev. Nancy A. Willis and the Rev. Michael Leckie officiated.

“You are here today because a brother has answered his last alarm,” Leckie told the gathering inside the arena, noting that many people in the crowd had known LePage only as “Pickles” and had just learned his real name. Any firefighter who came to the Kingston station, Leckie said, would be “welcomed into his house. … And then stories would begin, and some might even be true.”

“He died doing what he loved,” Leckie said. “He died doing his duty … taking care of the station that was his second home.”

Lt. Anthony Vitone of the Kingston Fire District said, “His heart and soul was dedicated to the fire service, to his brothers.”

His family was also grateful to the fire service, Vitone said, for “giving him an extended family but also for keeping Pic out of the house for all those years.”

Vitone said that LePage had donated his organs, and he cautioned the recipients: “Don’t be surprised if you wake up someday swearing … and smoking a cigar.”

LePage had worked 25 years for the Kingston Water District, retiring in 2004. In addition to his wife, LePage leaves a son, Allan P. LePage Jr. of West Kingston and Hope Valley.

ffreyer@projo.com / (401) 277-7397