December 7, 2022, is a date that the Lehigh Valley fire service will never forget. That night, a house fire on Clamtown Road in West Penn Township sent crews racing from multiple departments. Among them were members of the Community Fire Company of New Tripoli, a volunteer company that has protected its corner of Lehigh County for generations. Two of those volunteers, Firefighter Marvin Gruber and First Assistant Chief Zachary Paris, entered the burning structure because someone was believed to be trapped inside. Neither made it out alive.
Who They Were
Marvin Gruber was 59 years old. He had served as assistant chief of the Northampton Community College Department of Public Safety for 22 years and had been a volunteer firefighter for much of his adult life. People who knew him described a man who showed up every time the alarm sounded, no matter the hour, no matter the weather. He was steady, experienced, and the kind of firefighter younger members looked up to without him ever needing to say a word about it.
Zachary Paris was 36. He had joined the New Tripoli fire company 14 years earlier and risen to the rank of first assistant chief. At 36, he was in the prime of both his career and his life, with years of service ahead of him. His dedication to the company and to the community was evident in everything he did. He was the kind of leader who led from the front, which is exactly where he was on the night of December 7.
A Region Mourns
The response to their deaths was staggering in its scope. Approximately 100 firefighters from four counties responded to the fire itself. In the days that followed, thousands attended viewings and memorial services held at Northwestern Lehigh Middle School. Buses brought firefighters in full dress uniforms from across Pennsylvania and beyond. The line of apparatus stretched for miles.
The fire was later deemed suspicious, adding a layer of anger and grief to an already devastating loss. But in the immediate aftermath, the focus was on honoring Marvin and Zachary and supporting their families and their company.
Legacy That Lives On
In October 2024, Governor Josh Shapiro honored both men with the inaugural Keystone First Responder Award, created by Act 11 of 2024. A section of State Route 143 in Lehigh County was renamed in their honor. The National Fallen Firefighters Foundation included them in its 2023 ceremony at the National Emergency Training Center in Emmitsburg, Maryland, alongside 144 firefighters honored from across the country.
A one year anniversary memorial gathering brought the community together again in December 2023. The grief was still raw, but so was the gratitude. Marvin Gruber and Zachary Paris did what volunteer firefighters across the Lehigh Valley do every single day: they answered the call. The difference is that on December 7, 2022, the call cost them everything.
Their names are now part of the permanent record of sacrifice that defines the fire service. But in New Tripoli and across the Lehigh Valley, they are more than names on a memorial. They are proof that heroism is not abstract. It lives in the volunteer companies of small towns, in the people who leave their dinner tables when the alarm sounds, and in the families who wait by the door for them to come home.
