SERVING COMMUNITY AND COUNTRY:
Carlton Hudson and Pat Fitzgerald
On his eighty-eighth birthday with a pineapple upside-down cake awaiting him, Carlton Hudson sat in the Colonial Beach Volunteer Rescue Squad Building and reminisced, not just about his years of volunteering with the squad and the fire department but his military service, as well. Like so many others in town, he takes pride in having served his country.
With him on this morning is Pat Fitzgerald, whose volunteer record with the rescue squad has earned her repeated honors locally and in the region.
“Sometimes I think I’ve seen more of Pat over the years than I did my wife,” Carlton says.
His ties to the squad go back to 1950, when he can remember going on calls, when they had to dig in their own pockets to get gas money to run the ambulances to the hospital in Fredericksburg. Bucket drives in town to fund needed supplies or buy new equipment were the norm for many years, with the town kicking in some additional funding.
Pat, who’s now retired from her career as a physical education teacher, driving instructor and coach in the schools, can remember being called away from school many times to answer emergency calls. She took calls at night, as well.
At one point, while Carlton was driving a truck for Norman Oil, he got an emergency call and ditched the truck on the side of the street so that he could shift into volunteer mode and handle the emergency. The passing fire truck stopped so he could jump onboard.
Eventually employers tired of losing staff to these volunteer duties, and the town and county combined to bring in paid workers. Staffing for both the fire department and the rescue squad continues to be supplemented by dedicated volunteers, with each group supported by active ladies auxiliaries who do their share to see that funding needs are met.
1955 Rescue Squad: Gander Frank, Vaughan Drummond, Mac Coates
Colonial Beach Rescue Squad building, 1950s
Colonial Beach Rescue Squad: C. Hudson, E. Moore, E. Fenwick, C. Lee, C. Lee and E. Baird (from left to right)
Carlton and Pat both admit it’s not always easy taking calls when the emergency involves people they know well in the community. Pat recalls going to the scene of a fire at Carlton’s house, in fact, and racing around to the back of the house to show firefighters where to find her longtime friend.
“All Carlton could talk about was the fact that he wasn’t dressed,” she remembers. “I just kept telling him we had to get out of there.”
Hospital workers are always pleased when the volunteers come in with a patient, she says. “Often we know their history. That’s the positive side of it.”
But if Carlton is proud of the years he spent taking calls and driving the ambulance or a fire truck, he’s even more proud of the years he served in Korea.
He was assigned to the motor pool. “If one of the jeeps broke down, I was sent to deal with it.”
He remembers a staff meeting in which his first lieutenant stood up and announced Carlton would be taking over the motor pool. “Two months later he called me back in and said it was in better shape than it had been in years.”
Not only had he kept the equipment in top working condition, he’d improved the record-keeping, too. “I had four of the best mechanics you could find and the best generator man. We got that motor pool straight,” he says proudly.
Colonial Beach Rescue Squad
Colonial Beach Rescue Squad, 1950s
Colonial Beach Rescue Squad, 1969
Vintage Fire Truck
Colonial Beach Rescue Squad, 1955
Colonial Beach Rescue Squad, 1955
At one memorable inspection, he recalls that though they did pass, points were taken off for one thing. “There was grease underneath our fingernails.”
On one occasion, he felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to find General Dwight D. Eisenhower. “I shook hands with President Ike,” he says with a sense of wonder.
When he was promoted to sergeant, he told his superiors they were “moving too fast for me.”
At one point during the war, he crossed paths with the son of Captain Joe Miller, the Colonial Beach police chief. A lieutenant colonel, Miller suggested Carlton stay on and serve as his chauffeur. Carlton declined, so he could see the job he’d started with the motor pool through to the end.
His brother started his own tour of duty in Korea just as Carlton’s finally ended, and he came back to Colonial Beach.
Back home he officially joined the Colonial Beach Volunteer Fire Department and once more continued his involvement with the rescue squad.
His full-time job by then was working for the Norman Oil Company, owned by George S. Norman. Carlton was there for thirty years, and, as it had in the military, his reliability paid off.
“Mr. Norman had racehorses, and he liked to go to the track to check on them and watch the races.” Carlton called him one day at the track about a problem.
“I called Mr. Norman my second daddy,” Carlton says. When Mr. Norman came home to resolve the problem, part of his solution was to have Carlton’s name added to the company checks. “He told me, ‘If you need something, you buy it. Just don’t ever call me at the track again.’”
From that time on, Carlton managed the company, which was located at State Road 205 near Wilkerson’s restaurant. “We dealt with Mobil Oil,” he recalls. “The product came by boat. We had to wait for high tide so it could get in there.”
Class trip to the firehouse, 1950s
Colonial Beach Rescue Squad, 1980s
Colonial Beach Fire Department, 2015
He took one of the drivers down to Richmond to look for a new truck. The driver was drawn to a big Mack truck with lots of chrome on it. Carlton got the salesman to “sharpen his pencil” and make a better deal, then he bought the truck.
The next time Mr. Norman came by, the driver was worried about the expensive purchase.
“He said, ‘Mr. Norman’s going to jump all over you,’” Carlton recalls. “I told him, no, he’s not.”
Mr. Norman spotted the truck right away. “Where’d you get this?”
The worried driver jumped to his boss’s defense. He didn’t need to. Carlton stood up for himself to the man, who was seldom around from May through December.
“I told him, ‘You don’t realize we’re a big oil company now. There are people who want to take over.’” He showed him the company checkbook, detailed the changes he’d made, the routes he’d expanded. He showed his boss every expense and every bit of income itemized. “I told him, ‘I’ve built you a big business.’”
Mr. Norman wanted details about the staff and what each of them made, information Carlton readily supplied. “The next time he came in he had a big suitcase full of money, and began to hand out bonuses. He gave me $1,500, one of the drivers $900, others $500. He gave $200 to the girls in the office. He said one of his horses had come in.”
Though there were offers to buy out the thriving business, “he never would sell,” Carlton says. After he died, it was finally sold off. “If I’d been younger, I’d have bought it,” he says.
Just as he felt a personal kinship to George Norman, Carlton and Pat both feel as if the Colonial Beach residents are more than a community. “We’re one big family here,” Pat says.
Like all families, there are occasional squabbles, but in the end, in a crisis, everyone pitches in, and dedicated volunteers like these two are the glue that holds much of it together. Pat, who’d coached at the school for years, was recently honored for that work and so much more. One of the ballfields was renamed Fitzgerald Field, a surprise that deeply touched her. Like so many who give so much to the town, the reward for her is in the giving, not the recognition.
Colonial Beach Fire Department building, 2015