GREENE – A 22-year-old man pulling a trailer with a pump and hose behind a Buick was Greene’s first fire department. Soon, that man, Alden Peterson, will be honored for that and other achievements 56 years later when the new fire station is dedicated.

That will happen on Nov. 23. Peterson, 78, will be cited for more than five decades of public service to the Fire Department and to the town.

After Peterson hooked the trailer to his mid-1940s Buick and put out a fire at a farm in 1947, the forerunner of the Greene Volunteer Fire Department was born. Peterson and a few others fought fires with the Buick and the trailer for the next eight years. The Greene Volunteer Fire Department officially began in October 1955 after funding to start the department was appropriated at a town meeting. Peterson was named chief, a position he retained until he resigned in May 2002. He remains a member of the department.

“They basically needed a fire department because they were relying on Lewiston. The deal with Lewiston was you had to pay for fire service,” Peterson said. When there was a fire, Greene residents had to first call the chairman of the Board of Selectmen who would call the Lewiston Fire Department.

“We’ve had a good history since we started the Fire Department. We even saved a few chicken houses,” he said.

“We always ran the Fire Department to provide the service that was needed, but we kept expenses as low as possible,” Peterson said. Nearly two decades ago, he converted a Central Maine Power Co. truck into a pumper for the Fire Department. That was one of several trucks Peterson converted into firetrucks.

Peterson recounted the opening of Greene Central School during the early 1950s and closure of the two-room Patton School. With the availability of the Patton School building and the land surrounding it, selectmen gave the site to the newly formed Fire Department in 1955. Peterson and several volunteers built a fire station with eight bays attached to the school.

The fire station Peterson built and the historic schoolhouse were torn down last year to make way for the $1.5 million fire station that will be dedicated Nov. 23. The Greene Historical Society made an unsuccessful effort to save the schoolhouse.

“I felt it (Patton School) was an historic building. They (selectmen) took the easy way out and tore the thing down. I was hoping the Historical Society would get a hold of it. They’ve got a nice fire station there now, but it was built on the wrong lot and it cost the town a lot more than it should have,” Peterson said.

When Peterson stepped down, then Assistant Fire Chief Bruce Tufts became Greene’s second chief. Tufts is the son of one of the founders of the Fire Department.

“Nobody has dedicated more time or energy to the department. I’m sure there will never be anybody like him,” Tufts said of Peterson.

A United States Navy veteran of World War II and a graduate of Harvard University, Peterson retired after 55 years as an engineer with the former New England Telephone Company and NYNEX, now Verizon.

Peterson served nine years as a selectmen during the 1950s. He was appointed to the Budget Committee in 1947 and has never left that position. “I’ve been on there forever, it seems,” he said.

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