Peninsula In Passage

Community Services Who you gonna call? Driver and Bennett’s Creek have a long tradition of community service through individual volunteers and service organizations. Hopefully the same spirit that motivated generations of local families will encourage residents in newer neighborhoods, such as Harbour View, to step up to help their neighbors and make friends within the larger community. Fire and Rescue Edward Taylor remembers when the whine of a fire siren sent people dashing from their jobs to the fire scene. “You’d be sitting in the barber shop in Driver, the siren goes off, the barber drops everything and goes and you’re still sitting in the chair,” says Taylor, “The fire department had an old building with three bays near the crossroads and the siren mounted on a tall pole. Garland Matthews was the chief. Traditionally there was one paid man whose job it was to get the engine to the scene where the volunteers would meet it.” In 39 years Taylor has gone from riding on the back of those fire trucks from the Driver Volunteer Fire Department to serving as Interim Chief of the Suffolk Fire & Rescue Department. The Driver Volunteers organized in 1961 and Taylor joined in 1969. He was 19, just graduated from John Yeates High School and, he remembers, “Young and gung ho, I took every training class I could.”

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