Volunteer Fire Company Marks Centennial With Regional Ceremony and Retrospective
One hundred years of service, marked with the kind of ceremony that the company's founders would have found entirely appropriate and the company's current members found slightly overwhelming.
The Millhaven Volunteer Fire Company marked its hundredth year of continuous service last Saturday with a ceremony that drew representatives from municipal governments, fire companies, and civic organizations from across the region, along with a substantial crowd of residents whose families have been served by, or served in, the company over the course of its century of operation. The occasion was, by the accounts of those who organized it, both more and less than they had planned: more attended, more emotional, and rather less punctual than the schedule had indicated.
The company was founded in the spring of a year that local historians note was also the year the township got its first telephone exchange, a coincidence that the ceremony's master of ceremonies offered as evidence of a general tendency toward progress that Millhaven has maintained, with occasional reversals, ever since. The remark was received warmly.
Current company chief Arthur Brannigan delivered brief remarks that focused less on the company's history than on its present circumstances, which include a need for equipment replacement and a recruitment challenge familiar to volunteer fire organizations across the region. "We are grateful for a hundred years," he said. "We would like to have another hundred. That is going to require some help."
Information about volunteering with or supporting the company is available through the township's website.