Meet 10 of Butler County’s Hometown Heroes
To honor ‘service above self,’ Rotary clubs across Butler County recently honored 29 Hometown Heroes from the ranks of police, firefighters and emergency medical services.
The honorees will come together at the Hometown Hero Awards dinner Sept. 30 at Tesla BioHealing & MedBed Center on Route 8 in Butler Township, where the top three award winners will be further honored.
Read about ten of the 29 honorees below. Ten others were featured on social media yesterday, and another nine will be featured on Friday.
To see the full list of 29 honorees, visit butlereagle.com/hometown-heroes.
Talk to the people who know him best, and they’ll tell you that it’s not a surprise that Matt Springer was named a Hometown Hero.
Springer is a volunteer firefighter and EMT with the Harmony Fire District. He was selected as one of this year’s honorees by the Rotary Club of Zelienople.
“If you pricked his finger, he’d probably bleed Evans City.”
Lee Dyer, membership chairman of the Keystone Rotary Club, said he’s never known someone more committed to community than Glen Walker. It’s one of the reasons why Walker was nominated and selected as a Hometown Hero.
He worked as a disc jockey to help raise money for EDCO Park, coached youth sports, served as a volunteer firefighter and worked as a police officer for 33 years, yet Joe McCombs was surprised to be recognized for his community service.
“I was surprised. It was very humbling,” McCombs said. “I was very appreciative of it.”
Ed Steinmetz’s career in public safety may have begun on the playground, but it has crescendoed into a respected position as an officer with the Cranberry Township Police Department.
“I always played cops and robbers and SWAT as a little kid,” he said with a laugh. “Then when I got to college, I didn’t have a good idea of what I wanted to do, and it started out more on the forensic side.”
At 80 years old, Nancy Brice is like the Energizer Bunny, running circles around everybody she works with, said Kandi Nassy, fellow Karns City Regional Ambulance board member.
She was nominated as a Hometown Hero by the Chicora/East Brady Rotary.
Vern Smith, of Butler, retired as 911 director of emergency services for Clarion County six years ago, but he's not letting his 50 years of emergency medical services experience, including as a teacher and an administrator, go to waste.
He's joined with other veterans of the EMS/paramedic field to form Citizens Concerned for EMS, a group pressing to educate the public about EMS, aiding the growth of new EMS leaders and assisting elected officials to ensure the availability of pre-hospital emergency care in their respective communities.
A township supervisor, a software consultant and a master firefighter, Cranberry Township’s Bruce Hezlep is, at heart, a family man.
“My priorities are my God, my family, everything else, right?” he said. “It does take some balancing, but it also takes a very supportive family.”
Conrad Pfeifer was teaching police officers before they finally convinced him to become one.
Pfeifer said years ago he was a public safety dive instructor instructing police officers across the country in scuba and dive techniques.
With a fireman for a grandfather, Robbie Keebler said he “kind of grew up in the fire house” in Collegeville, Pa.
A full-time undergraduate student studying environmental science at Slippery Rock University, Keebler has since followed in his grandfather’s footsteps as a volunteer firefighter for the Slippery Rock Volunteer Fire Company and Rescue Team.
Brian Greenawalt is the kind of person you’re likely to meet on your worst day.
A paramedic for Harmony EMS for the last 15 years, it’s the nature of his job.
To see the full list of 29 honorees, visit butlereagle.com/hometown-heroes.
