100 years of history – First published in 2003-2004
He was not one of the original firemen in Station No. 2 – it was formed in 1942 when he was 12 – but Matthew Williams at 73 is one of the few surviving members of the town’s black fire department.
He was looking at a picture the editor had found and brought along where he was second from the left. The others are Chief Edward Alston, George Massenburg and Robert Alston, and they were standing in front of the truck the white department bought in 1948 and gave to the black department in 1953.
Frank R. Keith, the grandfather of Jimmy Keith, now the fulltime chief of the Wake Forest Fire Department, organized what was known as the colored volunteer fire department. (Readers should go to the website for the Wake Forest Fire Department to see the Keiths who were an essential part of the department for years.)
Williams, who now lives at the Wake Forest Care Center, remembered some of the other firemen he served with like Luther Tuck, Oscar Smith, Buster Alston, McKinley Mitchell, William Thomas and Eugene Lucas. Smith served at least 10 terms as the president of the N.C. Volunteer Firemen’s Association.
“The fire department was up there by the water tank,” Williams said. A garage-like building, it was on North Taylor Street where the Alston-Massenburg Center now stands. The fire house burned down – “Somebody tried to sleep in there one night” – about the same time the black and white departments were combined. Williams said he did not join the combined department. “I knew I was too old to go down there.”
When the black department was formed, “They started off with an old panel truck with the body cut off. The town gave us their first truck later on,” Williams said.
The largest fire he remembers was the one that destroyed the Keith grocery store on South White Street on Jan. 26, 1961. Williams said he was out on one of his many jobs, working as a carrier for the News & Observer, when the fire began early that morning but he joined the other firefighters later. A severe ice storm struck that morning, and firemen from town and Rolesville had trouble staying on their feet while holding the fire hoses.
The other large fire Williams remembers destroyed the slaughterhouse “down in the woods” off Wait Avenue that was owned by Wait Brewer Sr., who also owned a grocery store on South White Street. (It was probably about where Taylor Street meets Wait now.)
Williams’ mother was Peggy Fort and his father was June Williams, called Juney. His three sisters, Gladys Gill, Mary Massenburg and Ella Smith, live in Wake Forest and some of his nieces work at the care center.
Juney Williams worked for Mrs. C.L. Jackson, who owned the first coal yard in town. It was first down where the underpass is now, Williams said, and then moved down by the old water plant (now Dawn Morehead’s dental practice) by the railroad tracks.
Thinking about the street lights on Nelson Street, “We used to play under the lights, things like I Spy and hide-and-seek.” The hill on Pine Street was steeper then, Williams remembered, and the children called it Happy Hill. When it snowed, “We would get our mama’s chairs out of the kitchen and slide down hill on them.”
Williams attended DuBois School through the fifth grade and then quit to go to work. Along with carrying the newspaper for W.L. Glover, Williams worked as an electrician, delivered groceries for Frank Keith and worked at both the W.W. Holding Cotton Company and the farm the family owned.
Still active, Williams walks to the downtown area most days and can recall the stores that once occupied spaces like the Harrison grocery store that was between the Keith grocery store and Jones Hardware, all across from what is now Burkenstocks Restaurant. (It was in the ground floor of the T.E. Holding Drug Store, now empty for 15 years.)
He remembers going to movies in the Forest Theater (now the site of Fidelity Bank). At first, blacks entered from the alley and up a back staircase, but later they entered from the front although they still had to sit in the balcony.
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Editor’s note: The top story for the Gazette the week of January 14, 2003, was “Owners of another 277 acres petitioning for annexation.” The two petitioning owners wanted land on the south side of Rogers Road just east of the intersection with Forestville and Heritage Lake roads.
“One of the tracts contains 200 acres, and the entity requesting the annexation is POGE, a limited liability corporation created by Andy Ammons, the developer of Heritage Wake Forest.
“The second tract at 3908 Rogers Road has 77 acres. Rogers Road Associates is requesting the contiguous annexation.
“Earlier in the meeting, the commissioners will hold public hearings and then probably agree to annex two other properties owned by Ammons or his companies: 26 acres on the south side of Rogers Road and 59 acres on the east side of South Franklin Street.
“The four annexations are part of steady stream of requests for developing land to be added to the town. The town requires that builders and developers who want town services, mostly water and sewer, request annexation in order to receive them.”
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