Howard County firefighter Lt. Jeff Shilling will play taps for the fifth consecutive year at the Fallen Heroes Day ceremony Friday at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens in Timonium.
Shilling, 46, an Elkridge resident, will mark his 31st year with the Howard County Department of Fire and Rescue Services this summer. In 1988, at the age of 16, Shilling was a volunteer at the Elkridge Volunteer Fire Department. In 1993, he was officially hired by Howard fire and rescue services.
His late father Edgar Shilling Sr. was also a Howard firefighter, and his brother Edgar Shilling Jr. is a battalion chief for Howard.
Jeff Shilling currently works out of the Ellicott City Volunteer Fire Department.
Shilling, who as a child converted his wooden Radio Flyer wagon into a firetruck, also found a passion for playing the trumpet in elementary school.
“In the fourth grade, we got to pick an instrument and I wanted to be in the band, and I thought the trumpet [was] a cool instrument so I played the trumpet,” he said.
He went on to play at Elkridge Elementary, Ellicott Mills Middle and Howard High schools. Nowadays, he mainly plays at memorial services for men and women whose careers were in the public safety field.
Friday’s Fallen Heroes ceremony, which is open to the public, is the 34th year of the statewide tribute to the men and women of the public safety community, according to a news release. Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. and J. Michael Zeigler, acting secretary of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, are slated to give addresses.
Gov. Larry Hogan has issued a proclamation declaring the day in May on which the ceremony falls as Fallen Heroes Day in Maryland, as he has done in years past, and ordered flags to be flown at half-staff at the State House and all state facilities, according to the release.
Including Friday’s observance, a total of 186 Fallen Heroes have been honored at the ceremony and 72 members of the public safety community are buried at the Fallen Heroes Memorial in Timonium.
This year’s event will honor Lt. Nathan Flynn, a Howard County firefighter who lived in Havre de Grace; Baltimore County Police Officer Amy Caprio, who lived in Fallston; Special Agent Nole Remagen from the Department of Homeland Security; Rescue Captain Patricia “Pat” Osburn of the North Beach Volunteer Fire Department; and Daniel “Danny” Lister, assistant fire chief with the Queen Anne-Hillsboro Volunteer Fire Company.
Two additional public safety members who died in the line of duty before the ceremony was established in 1986 will be honored Friday — firefighter Steward Godwin of the North East Fire Company who died while responding to the Dec. 8, 1963, crash of Pan Am Flight 214 that went down in Elkton and Baltimore City Police Officer Jimmy Halcomb, an eight-year veteran who was shot and killed by a sniper on April 16, 1976.
Caprio died on May 21 after being struck by a black Jeep Wrangler on Linwen Way in Perry Hall. Four Baltimore teenagers have been charged as adults with first-degree murder and other counts in her death.
Flynn died on July 23 after falling through the floor of a Clarksville home as he was battling a seven-alarm house fire. He was the first member of the Howard County Department of Fire and Rescue Services to be killed in the line of duty.
While Shilling never worked directly with Flynn, he said he was “fortunate enough” to play taps at the firefighter’s funeral. Taps is a well-known bugle call played for flag ceremonies and military funerals by the United States Armed Forces.
“Taps is a hard thing to hear played, especially at a funeral,” he said.
Shilling said he chooses to play “for the family and to honor the fallen.”
The years in which he has played taps during Fallen Heroes Day, he has arrived around 11 a.m., checked in and headed to the top of the hill near the memorial site. He played his trumpet, quietly packed it up and slipped out.
“It’s not that I don’t want to talk to people, [but] that day is for them,” he said. “I don’t want people to tell me that I did great, same with any of the services.”