CORNISH — On a Friday afternoon in late July, a procession of about 40 fire trucks wended its way through Cornish, Meriden and Plainfield on a route that passed an unassuming machine shop nestled between a two-story residence and the Cornish Flat fire station.

In that modest shop, nearly all of the trucks in the cortege had been built by Larry Dingee and his small crew of employees.

Dingee had just turned 69 years old when he died unexpectedly of heart failure on July 4.

He was the founder, owner and operator of Dingee Machine Company, which builds and services fire trucks.

“I don’t think I’ve ever attended a funeral for a firefighter and seen so many fire trucks show up,” retired Dingee Machine employee and former Cornish Fire Chief Bob Rice said.

Since 1979, Dingee Machine has fabricated custom trucks for fire departments throughout northern New England, as far north as Fort Kent, Maine, on the Canadian border.

“Larry took great pride in the fact that his last name was on something so important to communities and departments,” his stepdaughter Ashley Cunningham said.

A member of both the Plainfield and Cornish fire departments and the Cornish Rescue Squad, Dingee was instinctively a helper.

He served three terms on the Cornish Selectboard and held volunteer roles on a number of town boards and committees over the years.

“If somebody needed help, he would respond and do whatever he could,” Plainfield Fire Chief Bill Taylor said. “The fire service was in his blood.”

On the day he died, Dingee had been helping the Plainfield Fire Department prepare for its part in the town’s Independence Day celebration.

Since his death, Dingee’s stepdaughter, Kelsey O’Connor, has heard stories from neighbors, both familiar and unfamiliar, about how “Larry came and helped them with something at their house or with their car,” she said.

“It wasn’t surprising, because that’s how he’s always been with us, but it was nice to hear that that wasn’t just because he was family, that he extended that to community members as well. He was very special in that way.”

Both of his stepdaughters work at Dingee Machine, Cunningham in the front office and O’Connor in the machine shop.

Dingee and longtime Cornish resident Dale Lawrence married in 2009. The two had long known each other through Cornish’s rescue squad and its fire department — Lawrence was a firefighter — and began dating in about 2006, O’Connor said.

“They loved each other so much,” O’Connor said. “They had so many plans.”

O’Connor and Cunningham were young adults when Dingee joined their family.

“It was never awkward,” Cunningham said. “It was always like, ‘Well, Larry’s here, time for dinner,’ or, ‘Larry’s here, let’s go do this project.’ ”

O’Connor reflected on the growth of her relationship with Dingee. “I’ve always liked Larry and always respected him,” she said. “But it takes time to build a good, strong, fatherly relationship. I am so grateful that we ended up getting this decade-plus time to build that deep relationship because we got to a point where he just felt like another father to us.”

Dingee took great joy in his relationships with his five grandchildren.

“He was such a natural at being a grandfather,” Cunningham said.

In particular, both noted the way he listened to his grandkids, who range in age from 6 and 18, without condescension, in a way that showed that he respected their thoughts.

“Larry would always stop, he would listen, and he would respond in a way that showed them he was listening, which I find incredibly valuable, and just shows someone the respect you have for them and the love you have for them,” she said.

Though running the business and being on call with the fire department kept him busy, there was a “whole other side” to Dingee that his family enjoyed. It was a side that had “snowball fights with kids and went sledding with them and played board games and became superheroes and all of that,” Cunningham said.

“I don’t think a lot of people would expect that from this serious person sitting in a meeting talking fire trucks. And it was a side that we were fortunate enough to get to see a lot.”

Not everyone with a mastery of skills is necessarily adept at teaching those skills to others, but Dingee was “a quintessential teacher,” Kimball Union Academy teacher and fire brigade leader Darrel Beaupre said.

The Meriden independent school has had a student fire brigade since the 1970s, and the roughly dozen students in the brigade are members of Meriden’s fire department.

Dingee delighted in helping the students learn all aspects of firefighting.

“He loved seeing the next generation of the firefighters come through and helped them learn to pump trucks,” Cunningham said.

Dingee’s teaching style focused on instilling confidence and independence as early as possible in the process.

“He liked to show you enough that you could try it out for yourself and see how it went,” Beaupre said.

Beaupre recalled responding to a fire and finding himself in the position of scene commander simply because he’d been the first to arrive.

A bit later, Dingee showed up but insisted that Beaupre stay on as commander. “He outranked me and had every right to take over the scene, but he didn’t,” Beaupre said. “He wanted you to feel what it was like to have that responsibility.”

Neither O’Connor nor her sister are firefighters, but Bill Harthan, Dingee Machine employee and Cornish Fire Department assistant chief, said with a smile that he was working on convincing them to join the department.

Dingee “never thought that we couldn’t do anything just because it was traditionally something men do,” O’Connor said.

The fire service saw enormous changes in the first decades of his business, and Dingee relished the challenges of customizing trucks for the changing needs of fire departments and personnel.

“Everything was much more informal,” in the 1980s, Harthan said. Trucks were smaller, they held fewer people and less water, and the equipment was less complex.

“When I first joined Cornish, they only had two air packs that were carried in a compartment of a three-man cab. So once you got there, you had to haul all this stuff out and get it on before you could go do your job,” Rice, Dingee’s retired employee and former Cornish fire chief, said.

A modern fire engine can carry five firefighters, with air packs integrated into the seats so that the crew members are ready to work as soon as they exit the truck.

Dingee enjoyed working with fire departments to design exactly what they needed in a truck, going back and forth with changes and tweaks until the blueprint was exactly what the department needed. He would deliver the completed truck, and then train the department on its use, often following up weeks and months later with additional guidance.

Dingee also took pride in knowing that over the years, most of his employees were also volunteer firefighters. “He wanted to be able to provide the town with fire protection, not only with equipment, but with personnel,” Rice said.

Dingee’s death put the future of the 45-year-old company in a brief limbo.

Cunningham worried about “not knowing where anybody at the shop stood or whether or not we were going to shut the doors and not reopen or if we were going to continue.” But the next Monday was “one of the hardest yet most therapeutic days I think I’ve ever had” as the seven-member team discussed their future.

“There was never a time we sat and took a vote or anything,” Cunningham said. Everyone showed up for work Monday morning, “and Bill (Hathern) said if you guys are in, we’re all in.”

“We’re picking up the pieces and carrying on. And I think we can do it,” Hathern said. “Everybody has been very, very sad that he’s gone but very, very glad that we’re going to keep going.”

Christina Dolan can be reached at cdolan@vnews.com or 603-727-3208.