The Council on Aging held its first virtual story slam April 21, featuring Peter Warren, who talked about the Harvard Fire Department, of which he was chief for nine years (1996 to 2004). With pride and nostalgia, Warren remembered some of the “good” fires, musters, fundraising events, and changes in the department that he witnessed during his more than 40 years of service. When all was said and done, what stood out most for Warren were the strong friendships and “all the good we did for the community.”
Peter Warren. (Courtesy photo)
Peter and his wife June came to Harvard in 1959. One day a few years later, a neighbor of his called the Fire Department to ask if they would come get her cat that was stuck in a tree. “We don’t do that,” she was told. About half an hour later the fire chief and deputy arrived to check on the situation, and Warren got to talking with them. He asked how one got to join the department and was told that he could “follow the trucks for a while.”
Having his real estate business in the town center made it easy for Warren to know when there was a fire, and he followed the trucks for a year and a half, after which he figured it was time to see if he could officially join the department. It was a “tightknit group” (until the early ’70s you had to live and work in town), and each member got to vote on accepting a new recruit. Voting was done by black and white marbles, and it took only one black marble in the box for a person to be blackballed. Chief Jack Burdick called the next day to ask Warren to join the department. That was 1964. After serving for 40 years, Warren had reached mandatory retirement age so he retired as chief in December 2004 but stayed active in other capacities for years.
Among what Warren called the “good fires” (meaning fires that are going strong) was the Bliss house at the corner of Prospect Hill and Still River roads, which couldn’t be saved. The red colonial there today is a reproduction of the original. At the other end of Prospect, where Depot Road comes in, was where, as Warren said, “I really blew it as a firefighter that day.” Turning onto Prospect, Warren noticed the woods burning on his left. He got the hose going only to suddenly realize that the house across the street was engulfed in flames.
Trial by fire
On Dec. 12, 1964, five months into Warren’s tour as a fireman, came the tragic fire that destroyed the 1875 Queen Anne-style Unitarian Universalist Church at the top of the Common, reportedly caused by a problem with the furnace. There were two firemen hanging out at the station when the call came in at 2:48 p.m. No fire was showing then, but by 3:15 the building had burned to the ground. Bill Hazel and Al Nogler went into the building to save the Paul Revere silver communion set, but they had been given incorrect directions about where it was stored and had to get out before they could retrieve it. The firemen’s wives cleared out the vault in nearby Town Hall to save town records, and Ayer firefighters came and sprayed the building to prevent it from burning too.
In the ’60s and ’70s brush fires were much bigger than they are today. It took half a day to put the biggest one out—on Vaughn Hill in Bolton. In those years the population was about a third the size of what it is today, and houses were more spread out. Consequently, often no one knew a brush fire was going, and by the time it was reported, it was huge.
From barns to fire station
In talking about the history of the Fire Department, Warren said that prior to 1921, eight farmers in Still River took turns storing a pumper truck (to which skis could be attached) in their barns, and in the town center two engines were housed in the back of Town Hall. In 1921, Town Meeting voted $6,000 to build a fire station (the white building directly west of Town Hall). The department had a chief and eight members. Warren called the town “penny wise and pound foolish” when it came to building a new station in 1976. Town Meeting turned down the plan calling for a second story, which would have cost $35,000. “And now we need a bigger station. …” Warren trailed off, with a rueful shake of his head.
It wasn’t until the late ’60s that the department created lieutenants. Today the department has 30 members; a chief, deputy chief, and four lieutenants comprise the core leadership. Warren named with pride the many families in town where a father and son were both Harvard firemen. In a “chat” session after the talk, Warren’s grandson Andrew Perry, whose dad Steve was chief for two years, “reminded” Warren that he has one of those families (his son Rob served as lieutenant, and he has two grandsons, Perry and Justin Warren, currently serving as lieutenants). In an emotional moment, Perry told his grandfather, “I remember the day you called me to appoint me to the department.”
Warren described how in 1952 Chief William Perry (different Perry family) made a significant improvement in the way a fire was reported, replacing the fire whistle with a horn system that sounded the designated number of blows to give the location of the fire.
“The Fire Department was a family,” said Warren, “and their families socialized on the weekends.” They held several parties a year at the station. Warren revealed that the men used to drink beer out in front of the building and when selectmen told them to stop, they threatened to quit the department. The families also did a lot of fundraising. In the ’30s the department held band concerts in the Town Hall parking lot, and afterward there was dancing in upper Town Hall. During the ’60s and ’70s ham and bean suppers were extremely popular. The firemen went door to door selling tickets, and people came from other towns as well. For a while the suppers were held on the first floor of Town Hall (there was a kitchen and no offices then) but moved to Bromfield’s cafeteria when they needed more room. In 1967, 750 people attended the annual bean supper, and over the next 10 years attendance more than doubled to 1,786. The suppers continued until 1979 when the turkey raffle became the department’s major fundraiser.
Large musters were popular from the mid-’60s to the ’80s, and Harvard belonged to two different leagues, one in Massachusetts and the other in New Hampshire. There would be 10 to 15 teams mustering every Saturday and Sunday from June to September. One year during a muster, lightning struck a house and engines from 13 towns went to the fire. Water polo was also popular, and Harvard was the team to beat.
The story slam was hosted by COA Program Coordinator Jen Schoenberg, who recently became a town firefighter. It was clear to the 31 attendees at the Zoom webinar (taped by Harvard Cable TV) that Peter Warren is justifiably proud of his years of service in the Fire Department and, fair to say, a bit nostalgic for those days of close friendships and family activities with his fellow firemen. His parting words were that the department is planning many activities for 2021 in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Harvard Fire Department.
