Hayward Fire Department
Melvin Lum
Captain · Station Officer · Thirty One Years of Service
May 17, 1954 · May 7, 2026
{Short epitaph statement goes here.}
A memorial service will be held in his honor. Lunch will be provided afterwards — please come, share a meal, and share your stories.
{To modify}Melvin was the kind of man you'd want on the worst day of your life. Calm in the cab on the way to a fire. Calmer still at the kitchen table afterward, pouring coffee, telling a story about a wildland season twenty years past.
He gave thirty-one years to the Hayward Fire Department, the last of them as a Captain. He trained crews, mentored probies, and answered the bell tens of thousands of times. The department was his second family.
He was a husband to Joanne for [xx] years, a father, and a grandfather — the role he loved most. He fished, he tinkered with old engines, and he never met a barbecue he couldn't run.
Add a sentence about his early years — parents, hometown, brothers and sisters.
Sports, jobs, the year he met someone important.
Where they started, the apartment, the first car.
Began as a probationary firefighter and never left the city he'd come to call home.
Notable calls, training, the engine he ran for years.
Took command of his own crew. Measured radio traffic, hot coffee on the bay table, never raised his voice.
The grandkids' names and the way he lit up around them.
Surrounded by family, in the home he built. May 7, 2026.
