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| Firefighter Edward D. Meegan |
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About three weeks ago, while researching old newspaper articles for our website, information surfaced about a Hamden volunteer firefighter who was killed in the line of duty, a tragedy that all living retired Hamden firefighters believed our town had never experienced in its 116 years of organized fire service.
According to articles in The New Haven Journal-Courier and The New Haven Evening Register, on Saturday, December 10, 1927, six volunteer firefighters and the paid driver of Centerville Co. 4 responded on Engine 4 to Box 57 in Highwood. At the Whitney Avenue bridge over Lake Whitney, the rear wheels of Co. 4’s Seagrave pumper got stuck in a raised trolley rail. The truck slued sizeways for sixty feet before striking a utility pole, breaking it off at the base. Four of the seven firefighters on board were unhurt and two received minor injuries. The seventh firefighter, Edward D. Meegan, was hurled from the truck and died the next day from massive injuries.
The tragic death of Firefighter Meegan was covered extensively in New Haven newspapers and elsewhere. The town was in a state of mourning and the selectmen ordered flags to half-staff. Hamden town officials and all of Hamden’s fire companies turned out for Meegan’s funeral Mass at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church, followed by his burial in St. John’s Cemetery in Middletown.
In subsequent investigations by New Haven Coroner Eli Mix and Hamden Fire Chief Charles Loller, the driver of the pumper was cleared of any wrong-doing in the freak accident. He continued to serve honorably as a Hamden career firefighter until his retirement in the mid-1950s.
Sadly, and for reasons unknown to anyone today, the story of Edward Meegan’s sacrifice seems to have ended in 1927. There is no mention of him in any fire company or department commemorative programs or histories, some of which were published only a few years after the accident. No one alive today, including a 93-year old former Hamden career firefighter who worked with one of the accident’s six survivors twenty-five years later, had ever heard of Edward Meegan.
Just why Firefighter Meegan’s line of duty death was forgotten in our department’s history is a sad and disturbing mystery, but we welcome the opportunity to properly honor him now.
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The members of the Hamden Fire Retirees Association invite all past and present members of the Hamden Fire Department - career and volunteer - to come together to pay tribute to Edward D. Meegan on the eighty-fifth anniversary of his last alarm, at 11 a.m. on Monday, December 10, 2012.
The ceremony will take place in the 3rd floor conference room in the Hamden Government Center, 2750 Dixwell Avenue. We hope to see many present and past career and volunteer department members.
Updated 12/9/12
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