PHOTOS BY WILLIAM MUELLER

A burgeoning collection of fire department and rescue patches is on display in Upstate’s Clark Burn Center. Two hundred eighty patches of various shapes and sizes occupy a dozen cases in a hallway where patients and family members like to stretch their legs.

The burn center is a six-bed intensive care unit that serves people from 27 counties, as far north as the St. Lawrence River and south into Pennsylvania, and from Rochester to Vermont.

Nurse Tamara Roberts, the burn program manager, says a grateful patient started the collection years ago by donating a patch from their home fire department. It grew from there. Today’s patches tend to be larger and more colorful. Plenty feature crosses formed by ladders, axes and fire hoses.

Some contain mottos. Shown above are several with distinguishing features.

This article is from the winter 2020 issue of Upstate Health magazine.