Waterford — In 1969, the Goshen Fire Department was staffed entirely by volunteers. If the alarm bell rang, a firefighter who owned a nearby store would have to close up shop. Volunteers who worked out of town would have to drop everything and drive back to Waterford.

Finally that year, after the town’s five other departments had already hired full-time paid firefighters to stay at the station during the week and respond to calls, Goshen decided to hire one of its own. The department’s members had resisted hiring a paid firefighter to work full time at the station, worried that the culture of an all-volunteer unit would be lost.

But in 1969 they took a vote to hire a paid employee, and the man they got was Bob Corbeil, a Navy veteran who went on to serve Waterford for more than two decades with an intense devotion and a healthy sense of fun.

Corbeil, 77, died last month in Barefoot Bay, Fla., where he moved three years ago to “live the sunny life,” former Goshen chief Neil Wiseman said Sunday.

His casket was delivered Monday to Jordan Cemetery in a 1938 Buffalo pumper truck — the same one that Corbeil and his wife, Kitty, stood on as they were married in August 1972.

“He was a very faithful gentleman,” former Goshen fire chief Tom Dembek said Monday as he stood beside Corbeil’s gravesite, where he is now buried beside his wife. “Bob was the kind of guy who never took a day off.”

Corbeil's stepdaughter, Kelly Howser, said she remembered hanging out with Corbeil as he took care of the fire house and responded to emergency calls.

"It was like a second home here," his son, Bob Corbeil, said Monday at a reception in the Goshen firehouse.

Corbeil, a New London High School graduate, started his career as a volunteer firefighter in Goshen before joining the Navy, serving as an engineer on the submarine tender USS Fulton in New London for four years.

As the so-called “senior man” at the station for more than two decades, Corbeil taught the ropes to generations of volunteer firefighters.

“I am who I am because of Bob,” said Craig Elberkin, a former volunteer with the department and the deputy chief of a fire department in Hyde Park, N.Y. "If you listened to what he said ... he always told a story."

Corbeil was always ready with a joke or a pool stick to bang on the ceiling under the room where on-duty firefighters were sleeping, Elberkin said.

"He was a mentor to a lot of us young guys," he said. "He taught us how to take the job seriously but still have fun doing it."

Jackie Carbone-Dorsey joined the department as a volunteer at age 16.

Even before that, she said, she would stay in the station while she waited for the school bus, just to hang out with Bob.

“He taught me how to hold the hoses, when to go inside the fire, how to help him back up the truck,” Carbone-Dorsey said.

She said she remembered responding to a fatal car crash and finding several children at the scene.

“He was very calm,” she said. “He just started directing people.”

After he retired in 1996, Corbeil stayed in Waterford, meeting with fellow retired firefighters each Friday at the Niantic Dunkin’ Donuts to talk about “anything and everything,” friend Joe DeLaura said Monday.

Decades later, a twist of fate brought Corbeil and Carbone-Dorsey together again. Sitting at the pool in her residential complex in Barefoot Beach, Fla., one day, she overheard a voice talking about Waterford and turned around.

It was Corbeil, and Carbone-Dorsey was so excited to see him she jumped across the pool. She later became Corbeil’s caretaker, taking him on shopping trips and hanging out by the pool.

“He always made me smile, always put me in a good mood,” she said.

Corbeil was proud of his role as the first paid firefighter at Goshen for the rest of his life, his son said.

“It was a big honor for him to be the guy,” Corbeil said.

On Monday, friends and family repeated a catchphrase that they said rings true even after Corbeil's death.

"Chiefs will come and chiefs will go," he would say. "But Bob will always be here."

m.shanahan@theday.com