Firehouse Recollections

CELEBRATING FIFTY YEARS OF THE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Chester West (or “Westchester” backwards as he liked to say) served in the Greenwich Fire Department from 1970 to 1986. On six occasions in the years 1987 and 1988, he described many situations he encountered over those years to Oral History Project volunteer Penny Bott-Haughwout. Chet loved his job and had already compiled his experiences over the years into books totaling 2400 pages (“unedited”). “I enjoyed doing it. It was something I could look back at with pleasure.”

 

Chet West
Courtesy of Greenwich Library
Oral History Project

Until 1978, Chet was assigned firefighting duty in Byram. “At the time there was a residency requirement that the town police and fire departments live in Greenwich.”  Although Byram had “high potential” for fires because “we had lumberyards and gasoline and oil storage…they had the smallest area to cover.” In addition, “Byram is the only place that is very well hydrated. If you notice, you’ll see hydrants just about every place. You don’t have to lay too much hose in Byram.”  Of course, with its proximity to I-95, the fire house handled many situations from car fires to motorists asking directions. “One guy had his car burning up, the back seat on fire. He pulls it right into the ambulance bay. He thought that this was a drive-in fire department… Well, the ambulance bay is right next to the gasoline pump!”

 

Chet remembered well the horrific fire at Gulliver’s discotheque in 1974, and the shocking Mianus River Bridge collapse in 1983. He was on duty at the dispatch desk the night the bridge fell into the Mianus River. However, most of his recollections for the OHP interview were of the everyday experiences he encountered in the department. Chet described Byram as “the friendly neighborhood fire department. We knew everybody… We did have the relationship, the compassion, and the respect from the public. It was a very good, secure feeling… I lived right next door, so it was easy… You’d have a lot of the neighborhood people stop in and say hello… Some referred to Byram as “going to the country club.”

 

Chet did quite a bit of cooking at the fire house and it was not unusual for the cop on the beat or people in the neighborhood to stop by and say, “’What’s that smell?’ … Well, you knew their motive. They wanted to stay for lunch… We always gave them something.’’ Chet and his cooking partner Hank were not above experimenting with rabbit, venison, or other game Hank had hunted. One dish he described was raccoon, “And it was very good. It had a white sauce on it… We all ate it.” Chet did have to admit to someone who asked for the recipe, that it really wasn’t turkey a la king.

 

Preparing firehouse food
Courtesy of Greenwich Library
Oral History Project

An event that was popular in the community was the annual turkey roll with chances for prizes along with the ever-popular free chowder. “I think it was a seventy-quart pot… Everybody was willing to help… It was very nice.” After seven years on the job, Chet noticed himself getting weaker.  “…then my fingers were getting an atrophy situation, and I was just getting tired quicker… That was May, 1978.” Chet described his diagnosis as a “spinal muscular atrophy type.” However, as he wanted to continue to serve the fire department in a useful capacity, he was transferred to “Central” in Greenwich as a dispatcher, a position he held until his retirement in 1986.

 

Studying a Greenwich map in the Watch Room
Courtesy of Greenwich Library
Oral History Project

Going to “Central” (the main headquarters on Havemeyer Place) was like “a rural country boy going to the big city for the first time… Being in the main business section of town, there was very little of the neighborhood atmosphere that I was so used to in Byram. I was assigned mainly to the watch room.”  The term “watchman” has a long history. “In the old days, firemen used to patrol the streets, watching out for fires, and the name just carried over.” While that role was normally rotated within the department, for Chet, “my assignment was permanent watch. It’s called the ‘hot seat.’ You have to make decisions. If you’re right, you’re praised. If you’re wrong, well, you’re really condemned.” Some of these crucial decisions included determining how to respond to a call -- two pumpers and a ladder truck? two ladder trucks? assistance from neighboring district stations? Chet became acutely aware of the size and complexity of Greenwich and its 265 miles of roads with approximately 1,034 names. 

 

From his viewpoint as a watchman, Chet developed a unique perspective on people from the many calls he had to field. “Sometimes people call us for the most menial things… We’ve become the main information service for the town when the Town Hall closes.” Some of these requests fell into the category of “full moon callers.”  As Chet described the phenomenon, “The full moon brings out a lot of callers… Whether it’s coincidence or fact, I really couldn’t tell you. But from my point of view, on a full moon, I’m usually ready for it… You get them (calls) both day and night, but the night is more frequent because people can’t sleep, or something’s been bothering them. They want to talk to somebody. Well, who can you talk to at midnight? … I don’t expect to get any sleep that night.”

 

Answering calls at "Central"
Courtesy of Greenwich Library
Oral History Project

Chet recounted calls ranging from complaints about landlords, to requests for child care on snow days, to inquiries about zip code numbers. Perhaps that is why Chet stated that “a lot of times, GFD is not only Greenwich Fire Department, it’s ‘Gifted For Diplomacy’… Unfortunately, our productivity is only measured in the number of fire calls. It’s not measured in the number of calls we answer.”

 

In this blog we must limit our reciting of the myriad memories that Chet West described in his one-hundred-and-twenty-seven-page interview with the Oral History Project. His reminisces are vivid and colorful, and full of fondness for his days in the Greenwich Fire Department. “I liked that job. As I say, I was a hometown boy… I looked forward to going to work.”

 

The interview “Firehouse Recollections” may be read in its entirety or checked out at Greenwich Library and is available for purchase at the OHP office. The OHP is sponsored by Friends of Greenwich Library. Visit the website at glohistory.org. Our narrator’s recollections are personal and have not been subjected to factual scrutiny. Mary Jacobson serves as blog editor. 

Eugene J. Moye, Sr.: Soldier, Policeman, Teacher

“Undaunted. Relentless. Determined” — words to describe Eugene Moye’s life from 1933 to 1994

Eugene James Moye, Sr. arrived in Greenwich in 1933, at the age of eleven, to join his mother, who was a domestic in the household of Augustus Richards. Moye’s mother had discovered that he was not attending school while living with his cousin in New York City and proceeded to enroll him in Hamilton Avenue School.

Eugene Moye and his wife Jeanette standing between their four children
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project

There, Moye met Esther Lauridsen, “a very wonderful teacher, everything a good teacher should be… If I’m anything at all, I owe it at least partly to her. I guess I became a teacher because of her… I’ve never forgotten her. I did get back to thank her for what she did for me before she passed on.”

Thus began Eugene Moye’s life in Greenwich and led to his productive careers of soldier, educator, and as the first black policeman in the town. Annette B. Fox of the Oral History Project interviewed him in 1994 as he chronicled his life in Greenwich.

According to Moye, “Very few blacks attended Hamilton Avenue School” in those days. From his Italian friends he learned “the wrong kind of Italian” as one of them told Moye the meaning of the words some other boys were saying to him. Then, “…as soon as someone said something to me, I knew what they were talking about, and I would reply with my fists… After that, we shook hands and that was the end of it.”

A searing memory for Moye occurred at graduation from Hamilton Avenue in 1937, when parents of a white student objected to him being paired with their daughter during the graduation march. Instead, Moye was paired with another girl “who did not mind… I’ll never forget her. She was a perfect lady… Maybe she doesn’t remember that graduation, but I do.”

Moye graduated from Greenwich High School in January 1941. He was not encouraged to apply to college. “Nowadays, guidance is an entirely different thing and I know it quite intimately as to the efforts and lengths they go to encourage students and get them to develop their potential.” However, in his day, “…I do not remember ever having an appointment with the guidance person at all.”

In the fall of 1941, Moye enrolled in a National Youth Administration program in Maine, where he studied sheet metal. Moye went to Port Chester “and got a job tacking floats for anti-submarine nets.” Shortly after, with war being declared, Moye decided to join the army. It was “on a segregated basis… We found ourselves doing the less ‘heroic’ jobs like quartermaster, bread baking, laundry, fixing trucks. I mean, not that it didn’t help – don’t get me wrong – but it was a put-down as far as I was concerned.” Later, “They were allowing them (blacks) to go into combat, which they did, and I have some friends who survived to tell about it.”

Eugene Moye, U.S. Army
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project

When Moye returned to Greenwich, his mother was still working “and she wanted me to go to college.” Moye enrolled in Teachers College of Connecticut in New Britain, now Central Connecticut State University, graduating in 1950. “…it was pretty rough-going because I had been away from the books. But I was determined to do it.” There, he met a fellow student, Jeanette, who became his wife in 1951. His marriage to a white woman occurred at a time when such unions were prohibited in many other states. Eugene and Jeanette were married for sixty years until Moye’s death in 2011.

Having graduated with honors from college with a degree in history and education, Moye returned to Greenwich in 1951 to apply for a teaching position. At the conclusion of his interview, it was politely suggested that he “go to an Indian reservation and teach.” So, Moye paused his professional teaching direction and took a job in construction where “all they wanted was muscle and a willingness to work” before deciding to apply for a position with the Greenwich Police Department. He was accepted there and “of course, the big question was, what was a man with a college education doing on the Greenwich Police Department? Economics, that’s what it was.” While Moye explained that “most police departments now recommend that you have a college degree…in the thirties they had people that hadn’t even finished grade school.” Most notably, however, was the fact that Moye was “the first black man there.”

Moye went on to obtain a graduate degree in police administration at City College in 1959. “After I got the degree, I said, ‘Oh, boy, I’m on my way now.’ No. In the very next examination, I still got knocked down in the service rating, the subjective evaluation.” Moye concluded that he would not receive a promotion in the department. “So, after that I began to think in terms of something else to do, and I started substitute teaching, and that was a lot of fun.” He continued to sub and do police work for about eight years. During that time, in 1967, he became a member of the first Youth Division of the Greenwich Police Department. “I liked that kind of work. . .. I was inspired with it, I really was.”

 

Eugene Moye, Greenwich Police ID
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project

Eventually, Ed Holden, principal of Western Junior High, met Moye “on the field in June 1971 and said that he needed somebody to teach social studies. I said, ‘I am your man.’” Moye resigned from the Police Department and began his career in teaching. “When I walked in for the first teachers’ meeting, it was no great surprise. That’s okay. That’s the way I liked it… It was very professional, very friendly, and the only question was whether you were competent and could do the job… I loved every minute of it.”

 The interview “Soldier, Policeman, Teacher: Overcoming Discrimination” may be read in its entirety or checked out at Greenwich Library and is available for purchase at the OHP office. The OHP is sponsored by Friends of Greenwich Library. Visit the website at glohistory.org. Our narrator’s recollections are personal and have not been subjected to factual scrutiny. Mary Jacobson serves as blog editor.

Ernest Thompson Seton

In 1902, a few rambunctious, somewhat unruly, children painted the iron gates of a private estate in Cos Cob with “all kinds of things that never should have been put on a gate with paint.” This singular incident may be viewed as the beginning of the formation of the Boy Scouts of America in 1910. 

Ernest Thompson Seton, from "By a Thousand Fires," by Julia Seton.
Copyright 1967 by Julia Seton.
Reproduced by permission of Doubleday & Co., Inc.

The gates were located at the entrance to a 100-acre estate on Orchard Street, known as Wyndygoul, that belonged to Ernest Thompson Seton, who had purchased it two years earlier.  Instead of calling for severe consequences for the young perpetrators, Ernest Thompson Seton must have decided instead that these children didn’t have enough productive ways in which to spend their idle hours. He visited Cos Cob School and spoke to some boys, inviting them to his property for an overnight stay during Easter vacation. One of them was Leonard S. Clark, ten years old at the time, who was interviewed by Oral History Project volunteer Penny Bott in 1975. He proclaimed at the time of his interview, “ . . . honestly and truthfully, I didn’t do it (paint the gates!).” 

Boys by their tepee at Wyndygoul.
Courtesy of Charles A. Clark

 

Leonard had clear memories of that first overnight at Wyndygoul (a Scottish name meaning Windy Gulch). “I remember distinctly that we were told to bring along a blanket, so that we could sleep in a tent that night.”  Mr. Seton’s “tent” was, in reality, “an original Indian teepee that Mr. Seton had bought somewhere from Indians and brought with him to Wyndygoul.” That night, by the light of an open fire, “Mr. Seton told us stories. . . . When he told us stories about the Indians . . . everybody paid attention. Not only paid attention, but we were just entranced with his talking. . . . Nobody ran around, nobody left, nobody turned their heads, nobody spoke. . . . He spoke of the Indians as outstanding individuals.” In addition, the boys were given advice about values, “about fair play, about never lying. He looked down on an individual if you told a falsehood. . . . We were taught always to tell the truth.”

 

Ernest Thompson Seton teaching archery, from "By a Thousand Fires," by Julia Seton.
Copyright 1967 by Julia Seton.
Reproduced by permission of Doubleday & Co., Inc.

At the close of that first night’s camp experience, Mr. Seton invited the boys to come back in the summer for a longer stay. The boys were to be called Woodcraft Indians and given Indian names. Clark’s name was “Broken Arm.” Their activities were chosen primarily to enhance their knowledge and skills of life in the woods. One involved swimming across the lake, which was about a hundred yards. “We ran races for which we got what he called a ‘coup.’ A coup was a feather that we could put in our hair . . . and, if you did particularly good, on the upper part of the feather was a little white thread that he had put on, and that was a grand coup.” They also raced around the lake “for the hundred yards and then we had the two-twenty races.” 

Ernest Thompson Seton teaching fire-making, from "By a Thousand Fires," by Julia Seton.
Copyright 1967 by Julia Seton.
Reproduced by permission of Doubleday & Co., Inc.

 A favorite game was the “deer hunt” in which one boy was elected to be the deer and given a head start. He would wear shoes onto which iron hoof forms, resembling deer hoofs and made by a blacksmith, were fastened. Off he would go over hills and rocks, trying to elude the “hunters” who followed the tracks until the “deer” was found to great elation. “It was an honor to be the deer, and we all wanted to be the deer, and Mr. Seton would change around so we would all have a chance.”

 The next year, Mr. Seton invited the boys to return “and then it grew, and all the Cos Cob boys came,” eventually including other boys from Greenwich. Ernest Seton taught the boys lessons which resonated with them throughout their lives. “Everything Mr. Seton taught us had something to do with . . . the development of fine young men, in every sense of the word. . . . He was teaching us honesty. . . . He was teaching us to be a team, to play together. He was teaching us of manhood that was to come, and he was teaching us the worth of outdoor life. . . . Everything that you can think of that’s good.” In addition, “There were no harsh words, no swear words. Swearing was one of the things that you just didn’t do. . . . While we were having a good time, in reality he was teaching us the proper things in life.”

 Ernest Thompson Seton was a member of the Camp Fire Club of America and invited that group to come to Wyndygoul to observe the Woodcraft Indians. He also wrote a book entitled “The Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians,” which delineated in great detail the rules, goals, games, and activities of the program he created. Sir Robert Baden-Powell of England, who authored “Scouting for Boys” and organized the Boy Scouts in England, was impressed and influenced by Seton. “But where we were called Seton Indians . . . he called them Boy Scouts.”

Leonard S. Clark
Courtesy of Maryanne Gjersvik

 Leonard proudly stated, “So the Boy Scout movement that’s over the world today . . . came from England back to us. . . . And so the first Boy Scouts in the United States were the group in Cos Cob under the leadership of Mr. Seton. . . . I attribute the good health, the fine characters we had . . . to the outstanding training Mr. Seton gave us boys in Cos Cob.” 

 The interview “Seton’s Indians” may be read in its entirety or checked out at Greenwich Library and is available for purchase at the OHP office. The OHP is sponsored by Friends of Greenwich Library. Visit the website at glohistory.org. Our narrator’s recollections are personal and have not been subjected to factual scrutiny. Mary Jacobson serves as blog editor.