Last Updated on August 6, 2015 – 11:30 AM CDT
The setting Panhandle sun lights up the memorial on the west side of the Moore County Courthouse on which the names of 19 firefighters who died 59 years ago are etched. Nineteen men with families, some of whom gathered Wednesday, as they do each year, to remember the sacrifices those men made July 29, 1956.
Dumas Fire Chief Paul Jenkins led the service to honor the men who died battling a fire at the Shamrock Oil Refinery, now Valero. The men were part of the Dumas and Sunray fire departments and the Shamrock Industrial Fire Brigade, and it is still one of the largest losses of firefighter lives in U.S. history. Forty other men were severely burned.
You can watch a video of the memorial below.