THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 1, 1996 TAG: 9601310169
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY PHYLLIS SPEIDELL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 124 lines
FIREFIGHTING RUNS IN George F. ``Bucky'' Hurley's family, but it took a raging forest fire to persuade him to become part of the legacy.
A Suffolk resident who was recently named fire chief at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, he is the youngest of four generations of Hurley firefighters.
His great-grandfather, Eugene Hurley, was a veteran firefighter who became Suffolk's first paid fire chief in 1915.
His grandfather, George Hurley, was part of the Suffolk fire company for seven years in the 1930s.
And his father, George ``Buck'' Hurley, logged 40 years fighting fires in Suffolk.
Bucky Hurley, 42, grew up just two doors from the Suffolk fire station. From the time he was old enough to stand on the front car seat and peer through the windshield, he watched his father fight fires. A pint-size mascot in an oversized helmet, he tagged along with the fire company in city parades, and he listened to the firemen's countless tales.
Still, he had no desire to be the next Hurley firefighter. ``I guess I just didn't know what I wanted to do,'' Hurley said with a laugh.
Then, one night 20 years ago, Hurley was jarred from his sleep by the roar of a forest fire threatening his home. Swift action by Hurley and the local volunteer fire company saved his mobile home, but the incident rekindled childhood memories and sparked his interest in firefighting.
Shortly after the blaze was subdued, Hurley found himself answering ``yes'' when one of the volunteers asked him to join the department.
At the time, Hurley was living in Sewanee, Tenn., where he had moved after graduating from Suffolk High School in 1971. There he learned cabinetmaking and made his home on 20 acres on the edge of a game preserve.
``The front yard was on a bluff overlooking 10,000 acres of fish and game land, and you could see clear to Georgia,'' Hurley said.
The night a wall of flames spread over the bluff, Hurley - then 24 - held the fire off until the local volunteers could get there.
Not long after that, Hurley returned to Suffolk. But the satisfaction of helping others and the excitement of the job had hooked him, so he joined the Suffolk Fire Department in 1979. ``I could hardly wait to get to work,'' he said.
During quiet times at the firehouse, Hurley would pull out old department log books documenting every run, many in his great-grandfather's and grandfather's handwriting.
Hurley's great-grandfather Eugene, a Poughkeepsie, N.Y., native, had been a U.S. Cavalry courier who spent five years dodging warring Indians to deliver dispatches to Army forts in the Western territories. After leaving the Army, Hurley joined the Barnum, Bailey, and Hutcheson Circus as an advance man and traveled all over the United States and Canada.
He happened to stop in Suffolk, liked it, and decided to make it his home in 1884. One of the first things he did was to join the Phoenix Fire Company, the Suffolk volunteer fire department. Hurley lived across the street from the firehouse on Market and Saratoga streets and kept a fire bell in his house.
For the first 30 years, the company relied on horse-drawn chemical engines that had to be manually pumped and were finally replaced by motorized equipment in 1914. In 1915, insurance underwriters insisted that Suffolk hire a paid, professional fire chief to supervise the department.
Eugene Hurley was 61 years old, a successful businessman and a city building and plumbing inspector when he was tapped for the chief's job. ``All the younger men were away in World War I,'' Bucky Hurley said.
George Hurley, Bucky Hurley's grandfather, continued the firefighting tradition in the Suffolk company from 1933 to 1939. His son, George ``Buck'' Hurley Jr., joined in 1945.
``In his heart, my father was always a firefighter, and he chased fire trucks as long as he could until he passed away in 1992,'' Bucky Hurley said.
Hurley remembers that his father also helped found the Nansemond Suffolk Rescue Squad, with a little station wagon running out of a borrowed building on Pinner Street. Buck Hurley was equally proud of introducing to the department the fog nozzle that dispersed water for more effective and efficient fire control.
Today, as fire chief at the shipyard, Bucky Hurley supervises a department of about 75 firefighters. During his 12 years with the department, he has been a liaison with the city fire departments of Hampton Roads, served as the shipyard's representative on the local emergency planning committee, instructed at the fire academy and helped develop the Waverly E. Sykes Regional Environmental/Fire Training Center in Cradock.
Hurley noted that firefighters from Portsmouth, Suffolk and Chesapeake train at the fire academy while the regional center has trained people from all over the world.
The home that Hurley and his wife, Kay, share in Suffolk reflects his legacy - especially the den, where photos of his firefighting family line the walls. A collection of fire memorabilia and antique toy fire engines, each with its own story, seems to crop up in almost every room.
A police scanner stays conveniently placed. ``I can hear the fire alarm and trucks from here in the house,'' Hurley said. ``I would go crazy if I didn't know what was going on.''
Hurley remembers the first time he entered a blazing structure as a volunteer firefighter in Sewanee. ``I was the first one there and scared to death, just hoping I would know what to do until the rest of the department got there,'' he said. But he also knew then that firefighting was in his blood.
After 20 years of fighting fires for a living, Hurley has only one regret. ``What I miss now is riding the engine,'' he said. ``I always loved that and still do.'' ILLUSTRATION: ON THE COVER
Photos by John H. Sheally III
Bucky Hurley stands in front of a fire truck at Norfolk Naval
Shipyard in Portsmouth. Photo by staff photographer Mark Mitchell.
``Bucky'' Hurley and his wife, Kay, enjoy some refreshment at the
``fire truck'' bar in their Suffolk home.
A collection of antique toy fire engines, paintings and memorabilia
dominate the decor in this room in the Hurleys' Suffolk home.
The Hurleys never tire of the items that remind them of other family
firefighters.
Bucky Hurley plays with his favorite firetruck. It was one of his
childhood toys, and the hoses actually squirted water.
by CNB