Bayville volunteer firefighter Brian Letrent died at 34 after a heart attack

BERKELEY – After Bayville Volunteer firefighter Brian Letrent died, his mother Kathleen Whitley received a call. His organs would go to two people with visually impairments, a woman with breast cancer and a 5-year-old girl who needed a bone marrow transplant, among others she could not remember in the shock of her son’s passing.

Letrent died on Wednesday, June 21 at 34 after serving 11 years as a firefighter.

According to the U.S. Fire Administration, which works to analyze and prevent fire deaths, Letrent passed away from a heart attack. He had trained in a full-scale drill the previous day and had experienced stress and overexertion.

“Firefighter Letrent has been a vital asset to our (department,) always willing to go above and beyond the call of duty to protect our residents and brother firefighters,” the department wrote in a statement. “Firefighter Letrent will surely be missed by his brothers and sisters at (Station) 17 for his selfless dedication to duty.”

Letrent’s sense of duty started at 17, when he told his mother that he was going to join the US Army, whether she wanted him to or not.

“I said, ‘Absolutely not. You’re not doing it,’” Whitley recalled. She remembered agreeing to his enlistment after he reasoned that in six months, when he turned 18, he could join on his own accord.

“He’s always been very bigheaded like that, stubborn,” she said. But, “he was never mean, never nasty. Never.”

During his six months deployment in Iraq, Whitley, who worked at the Asbury Park Press’s classified department, would worry and call her son every time she read about a bomb going off in the war.

Whitley and her son later made an agreement. As she had power of attorney over his bank account due to his deployment, she asked that he buy something every day from the mess hall.

“I’m going to mom that bank account and I need to know that there’s movement on that bank account. Because then I would know that you’re okay,” She recalled telling him.

When Letrent returned to his family’s home in Bayville in the early 2010s, he volunteered at a number of fire departments and was later hired by the Berkeley Township Parks and Recreation Department. Whitley said he had been training with the township’s Sewage Authority and was promoted the day he died.

“His whole life was the fire department,” Whitley said, stating that his friends were his fellow firefighters.

One friend, which Letrent became close to, started a family. Whitley remembers Letrent buying big presents for the kids including a bumper car in the shape of a firetruck.

“My husband and I, now, we’re shocked at the amount of love,” Whitley said about the number of people reaching out.

“I knew he had a lot of friends, but I didn’t know how many of those friends were best friends, that he was with on a daily basis.”

Whitley’s friend Linda Vogel started a Gofundme to raise funds for the Bayville Volunteer Fire Department in lieu of flowers.

Olivia Liu is a reporter covering transportation, Red Bank and western Monmouth County. She can be reached at oliu@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Bayville NJ volunteer firefighter Brian Letrent dies at 34