The volunteer firefighters in the Hawleyville section of Newtown are celebrating their 100th anniversary this year, and they have much to celebrate.

A banquet for current and past members is planned for this month, and the entertainment will be a documentary film, Exit 9: The Way of Life in Hawleyville, 1925.

Donna Ball, a support member, began researching Hawleyville Volunteer Fire Company (HVFC) two years ago. She initially thought she would be reporting on past chiefs, apparatus, and noteworthy fire calls of the past century. But as her research progressed, she realized there was much more to the history of Hawleyville than what initially meets the eye where the railroad tracks cross Hawleyville Road (Route 25) near Mitchell’s gas station and deli.

Ball started with the text of many stories from The Newtown Bee, which had been faithfully typed and kept on a floppy disk by Edgar Beers, a long-serving member who died in 2014. Beer’s collection had no accompanying photos, so Donna went to the Bee archives at C.H. Booth Library in search of them. With the help of the reference librarians, she was able to locate the many articles starting in 1896. The Bee did not print many photographs until the 1940s and 50s, however.

The librarians also gave her copies of Newtown Remembered, the three collections of oral histories, compiled by Dan Cruson, Andrea Zimmerman, and Mary Maki. Three of the memoirs within those collections — from William Honan Jr, Corona Rockwell Williams, and Eugene Cox — shed further light on the people and events of Hawleyville in the 1920s and 30s.

Ball also met Tina Benhardt at The Matthew Curtis House, a fellow member of Newtown Historical Society. Tina’s father, Andrew Sedor, and his brothers were active members of the volunteer fire company from the 1920s through the 1980s. Benhardt pointed Ball toward to another memoir, this one by “Rinkie” Rockwell, the youngest daughter of a family of 15 who lived on Old Hawleyville Road during this time period, from the Great Depression through World War II.

“The memoir, rich in detail, is a wonderful gift to us,” said Ball.

With the Shepaug Valley Railroad setting the backdrop, the story of the early fire company comes together as a tale of exuberant growth, participation and community spirit, led by William Abel Upham. Upham (1880-1949) had a food packaging business in Manhattan, and was one of the scores of wealthy New Yorkers who weekended in the peaceful countrysides of Connecticut. But being a “compulsive do-er,” Upham couldn’t rest for very long, and found opportunities at the Hawleyville railroad station as he waited for his connecting train to the city. He bought the 25,000 square foot Baker Furniture building (currently the Mission Allergy building). During World War I he began making individual tea bags. They were a resounding success, and by the early 1920s he employed over 50 women. He was, by all accounts, a generous and popular employer, who brought electricity to the area, and rerouted Route 25. He also spent lavishly on beautifying Hawleyville, including a Japanese-themed tea house. The automobile was becoming commonplace and so were tea houses, pit stops for Sunday drivers.

During this same period, he started Hawleyville Volunteer Fire Company, along with his neighbors and well-respected members of the community. He was its first chief and president. He donated his garage and the land it sat on, as well as his REO Speedwagon, retrofitted as the company’s first fire truck. The documentary film honors Newtown’s local firefighters, and by extension, all volunteer firefighters by recognizing that they — the railroad men, lumbermen, postmasters, farmers, and businessmen — were the firemen, then as now, who were “willing to go to any part of town to down the great demon fire,” according to Ball.

The fire company, she continued, “is a result of a cross-pollination between the bustling railroad hub and the great success of the tea bag, in this farming village.”

Hawleyville’s fire company thrived and flourished. Its members held a wide variety of events — from turkey suppers to Vaudeville shows — to raise funds to build, train, and obtain equipment. These events were also an important core of social gathering, a needed break from farm chores and the general drudgery of life before modern conveniences like cars, electricity, and running water. For eight years, between 1925 and 1933, Chief Upham and his neighbors were riding high, making Hawleyville Volunteer Fire Company what Ball calls “the banner organization of the county.”

Then tragedy struck. One Sunday morning in July 1933, a nightclub, then located adjacent to the firehouse, caught fire. The building burned to the ground, taking the Hawleyville fire house with it. The firemen pulled out their firetruck, the building’s piano, and furniture, and were attempting to rescue a barrel of kerosene when it exploded, burning eight firemen. One fireman, the company’s vice president, Lewis Durgy, died from his burns two weeks later. All the enthusiasm of that place and time came to an abrupt halt. Durgy’s death was deeply felt and mourned in Newtown and surrounding towns.

National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) did not begin recording Line of Duty Deaths until 1977. Durgy’s death had gone unrecognized by the State of Connecticut for 91 years. This year, however, he will be honored during the annual Connecticut State Firefighters Annual Memorial Service. His name will be formally unveiled on the Firefighter’s Memorial during a ceremony at the Connecticut Fire Academy in Windsor Locks.

A wreath will also be placed on his gravesite at Land’s End Cemetery in Hawleyville. He will also be honored at the 100th anniversary banquet and a memorial plaque will to be given to his grandson, 85-year-old William Durgy, Sr of Brookfield.

A Homecoming

At the same time Ball’s research was unfolding, another small miracle fell into the fire company’s lap: a 1948 Mack fire truck, Hawleyville’s first newly-purchased pumper, returned to the fire district it first served.

The truck had served Newtown from 1948 to 1963, when it was sold to a fire department in Weston, Vt. It served there for another 15 or so years. In the 1980’s, one of the Weston firemen took the ‘48 Mack to his barn, and there it sat until 2023. Norman “Jake” Hart was selling his house to move out of state, and wanted to see the firetruck returned to its rightful home. He contacted members of Hawleyville VFC Company, who drove up to Vermont with a flatbed truck and brought it back to Newtown. Amazingly, nothing had ever been removed from the truck. Its restorers — Matt Pfahl’s Mack and Antique Truck Restoration in Bethlehem — told Hawleyville’s members it was the most complete truck of its era they had ever worked on.

The town of Weston had painted over the words “Hawleyville Vol. Co.” when they put their own maltese cross on the doors. Hart told the members of Hawlevyille that he scratched the area with his thumbnail one day, and the red paint chipped off easily. He kept chipping, and revealed the name. But he didn’t know where Hawleyville was, until a bystander at a parade asked, “Is that from Connecticut?”

The faded word Hawleyville can still be seen when looking closely at the original 77-year-old axe handles.

Through its restoration the truck has been made safe, functional, and clean. It is also registered and insured. It will be parked outside Edmond Town Hall during the banquet in August, and will also accompany Hawleyville VFC when its members march in the Labor Day Parade on September 1.

Newtown has only one other antique apparatus — Newtown Hook & Ladder’s 1883 wooden ladder truck, designed to be pulled by manpower.

Centennial T-Shirts Available

As a souvenir of its centennial, Hawleyville Fire Company is offering custom-designed T-shirts for a $30 donation to the fire company. In addition to lettering celebrating Hawleyville Volunteers, Answering the Call for 100 Years, the original design on the back of the shirt features a tea bag and a train to represent the unique origins of the all-volunteer company.

Readers can purchase the commemorative shirts at Mitchell Hawleyville Deli and Café, 26 Hawleyville Road (Route 25)’s in Hawleyville and online through hawleyvillefire.com.