Joel Halberg, 90, who died February 8 in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., was a volunteer firefighter for more than 65 years in Rockland and Dutchess counties, with an indefatigable devotion to the art of rescue.

Starting at Spring Valley, Halberg was said to be only the second Jew ever allowed to serve in the club like volunteer departments. He served as battalion chief, deputy chief, and chief of the Spring Valley Fire Department. He also worked as an EMT and served on a helicopter rescue squad.

In 1973, Halberg estimated that he had answered more than 20,000 emergency calls over the years. He would answer thousands more after a 1980 move to Poughkeepsie, where he ended up serving as LaGrange fire commissioner in the years 1990 to 2000.

Halberg grew up in Williamsburg, where his parents had moved from Eastern Europe just before the outbreak of World War I. Growing up next to a firehouse, Halberg became more interested than most kids in the daily round of rescue calls, uniforms, and male camaraderie. His involvement increased after an alert fireman saved Halberg from choking to death on food. “He was always the pet of the firehouse,” Halberg’s nephew, Elliot Eisenbach, said.

In the early 1930s, Halberg moved upstate to Spring Valley, in northern Rockland County, where his parents owned small companies that produced pocketbooks and ties. Halberg would spend his entire professional career working as a fabric cutter for his parents and other local companies.

In 1939, after several years of tangential involvement, Halberg was made an official member of the Spring Valley department, according to Mr. Eisenbach.

He was involved with several spectacular rescues over the years. In one case, as reported by the Rockland County Journal-News, Halberg pulled a woman and her two small children to safety from a burning building after having been told the building was completely evacuated. “Even though we were told everybody was out, I was almost positive I could hear cries coming through the smoke,” said Halberg, who was so positive that he dashed in without his oxygen pack. After the rescue, he collapsed from smoke inhalation.

In another case, he helped revive a 3-year-old girl who had fallen into a creek and was submerged for 10 minutes before being rescued. “Three months later she came down and christened a new rig we had bought, and today she’s married and has children of her own,” Halberg told the Journal-News.

In his early days in the department, Halberg did not answer calls on the Sabbath, Mr. Eisenbach said, although he later loosened his religious strictures. Halberg said he occasionally encountered accident victims whose first reaction to him was, “I don’t want no Yid coming in here.”

Halberg served as a Spring Valley trustee for several terms starting in the late 1950s, and after retiring served as assistant village administrator. His first wife having died in 1976, Halberg moved to Poughkeepsie in 1980 and remarried the following year. He immediately joined the LaGrange Fire Department, where the firemen said they were delighted to find a veteran with more than 40 years of experience in their midst. He retired in 2000.

In 1997, Halberg was named Dutchess County’s Oldest Marching Fireman.

At his funeral last Friday, the 555 code went out to firehouses around Dutchess County, a traditional honor accorded firemen of long service or who have died in the line of duty, according to LaGrange Station 2’s captain, Sean Murphy.

Joel Halberg

Born May 26, 1914, at New York City; died February 8 at Lutheran Care Center in Poughkeepsie; survived by his son, Seymour, a grandson, and two great-grandchildren.