KNOX – Dana Sherman, at 70, has been named the Knox Volunteer Fire Company’s Firefighter of the Year.

“It is the ultimate award I could ever get. It’s from my own people,” he said. “It vindicates 54 years of experience.”

Sherman was in the hospital in February when the company voted on the award. “I had a bad infection from a gall bladder operation four years ago,” he said.

He began volunteering to fight fires when he was 17 as a member of the Jamison Road Volunteer Fire Company in western New York where he grew up.

He moved to Knox seven years later, in 1969, and joined the Knox company right away. Over the years, he’s served the company on many committees and in many capacities.

Currently a member of the fire police, Sherman was president for 12 years, and a commissioner for 16 years, serving as chairman of the board during his entire tenure. He’s also been captain and assistant captain; he chaired the Pucker Street Fair; and he served on truck committees in 2005 and 2015 as well as on the committee that oversaw building the firehouse in 1998.

“We built the bays 6 feet, 6 inches wide and 8 feet long, and now the trucks are 8 feet wide and 35 feet long,” he said. Of maneuvering the trucks into their bays, he said, “It’s tough.”

Sherman, who retired in 2003, had worked as a vocational teacher for the state in what had been called the Division of Youth, at Camp Cass in the Hilltowns and at a maximum-security prison in Claverack.

“You walk through seven doors no one has a key for,” he said of working in a prison. “I really liked it,” Sherman said of teaching there.

“What I liked was what I call the light-bulb effect. You can see, when a kid completes a project, he’s thinking, ‘Did I really do this?’”

Sherman went on, “I got a beautiful letter from a guy 20 years after he got out [of prison]. He thanked me just for being honest with him, helping him through the rough spots.”

The firehouse has been a second home for Sherman, who also served for 16 years on the Knox Town Board; the town hall is just a driveway away from the firehouse.

His family has joined him there. His wife, Mary, has been an auxiliary member for 34 years. His son, Dan, is currently the president of the company as well as a commissioner, and his grandson Kevin is the first assistant fire chief. Kevin’s wife is an assistant captain.

The Shermans, for fun, throw axes, a skill they demonstrate each August at the Altamont Fair. “It’s the family sport,” Dana Sherman said, and includes his grandson’s wife as well.

But Sherman is not someone who just carries a ceremonial ax when his company marches in parades. He was a drum corps member, using a skill he learned in high school music class.

“In a rural area,” said Sherman, “there’s not much to belong to. We have a lot of fun,” he said of those in the company. “There are bad memories, too…One of the hardest was when the Beresford farmhouse burned in the early eighties.”

What has kept him volunteering through the decades?

“The first thing is service to the community,” he said. “Then there’s the camaraderie, the friendships.”