Memorial a fitting tribute to firefighters

Pamela Murphy was a young mother with two small children when she received the worst possible news on December 3, 1974.

Her husband and the father of her children, William "Ray" Murphy, had been killed on his way to the scene of an accident as part of his job as a career firefighter.

The death of Mr Murphy, a former special services soldier who was just 31, was a bitter blow.

Reflecting on the incident and the time that followed, Mrs Murphy said despite the pain of the loss another memory stood out: the "marvellous" support of the firefighting community.

"I didn't expect to be told at lunch that day he was dead," Mrs Murphy said.

"But the firefighting community was very good to me when I was first widowed - they were marvellous, really."

At a memorial yesterday, some of the State's leading dignitaries, including Premier Colin Barnett, paid tribute to the 39 men and women like Mr Murphy who had died in the course of their job.

As part of the memorial, Mr Barnett unveiled two life-sized bronze statues modelled on firefighters at the Firefighters Memorial Grove in Kings Park.

Cherie Bain, whose grandfather Jake O'Callaghan had been a long-serving career firefighter until his death from a heart attack in 1995, said the statue was a fitting tribute to the profession. "The statue is really impressive," she said.

"I think it represents the bond you get between firefighters because only they know what it's like to go through that."

Asked whether she would want her four-year-old son Brodie to follow in his great-grandfather's footsteps, she was unsure given the risks but said it would be a noble pursuit.