Raymond C. Fogarty, a retired staff representative of the International Association of Firefighters who served for 25 years as president of Local 734 in Baltimore, which he helped to start, died Nov. 9 at a Cincinnati hospital after a heart attack.
A Mass of Christian burial for Mr. Fogarty, 83, will be offered at 9 a.m. tomorrow at Immaculate Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church, 8501 Loch Raven Blvd.
His son, John R. Fogarty, said he was a tenacious fighter for members of the local, but both his friends and enemies would say, "He always came at you from the front."
James J. Lacy Jr., who served as president or as a member of the Board of Fire Commissioners from 1959 until 1971, said that he had been friendly with Mr. Fogarty for 20 years.
Mr. Lacy said he got to know Mr. Fogarty when his own father had served on the fire board and as a fellow member of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick.
"[Although] he helped me to learn my way around the department, it made little difference when we disagreed," he said.
Both men respected each other even when they were on opposite sides of a question, and Mr. Lacy praised Mr. Fogarty's work representing the firefighters.
"You always knew where he stood," Mr. Lacy added.
Mr. Fogarty, his son said, was proudest of establishing the Widows and Orphans Fund to help the families of those killed in the line of duty.
He had started in the fire department in 1938 and retired in 1968 as a pump operator.
In 1943, about a year after helping organize the local, he became its president.
ALater, another local was established to represent officers in the Fire Department.
In 1949, he was elected a member of the board of trustees of the Municipal Employees Retirement System, a post he held until 1962, when he quit to become a member of the board of a new retirement program that had been established for police officers and fire fighters.
In 1954, he was named to the executive board of the international union and then became a vice president in 1958. He served several times as acting president of the organization.
He also had been active in local organizations of the American Federation of Labor and later of the AFL-CIO.
In 1968, he resigned from all his union and city offices to become a full-time field representative for the international union and continued working on the union staff until his retirement in 1983.
He helped to organize Fire Department locals in Annapolis, Montgomery County and Wilmington, Del., where the union had sought to represent firefighters for many years.
Born in the Oldtown area, he was educated at the Cathedral School, public schools and Mount St. Joseph High School, where he played football.
He was a charter member of the Notre Dame Council of the Knights of Columbus, as well as of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick.
His wife of 59 years, the former Catherine Dudley, died in 1986. He had moved to Bethel, Ohio, where a daughter lives, about four years ago.
He is survived by his daughter, Carol A. Ingram of Bethel; his son, John R. Fogarty of Bethesda; a brother, Edward C. Fogarty of Towson; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.