A Founding Member of Volunteer Fire Station Turns 100
Bill Pullen was honored by the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors this week, and celebrated the century mark with friends, family, and fire-fighters.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR & CORRESPONDENT
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Asked how he felt on the occasion of his 100th birthday, Bill Pullen, the only surviving founding member of Chancellor Volunteer Fire station, said, “I feel like I’m 24.”
Pullen and two other members of the local Ruritan club founded the volunteer fire station in 1956.
In honor of his 100th birthday on Friday, July 12, the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors presented him with a proclamation at this week’s meeting—and members of the present-day Spotsylvania Fire and Rescue department came to his party.
“I’ve been proud of my dad all my life,” said Pullen’s youngest daughter, Martha Daddato.
As a child, she remembers that he was frequently called away in the middle of the night to fight fires.
“His gear would always be ready,” she said. “He’d be out at all hours, then come home, clean up, and go to work.”
Pullen worked at the Sylvania Plant, then at a Shell station, and then at General Products making mechanical templates for doors.
In addition to founding the fire station, he also founded a local Boy Scout troop, and sang tenor in the choir at Tabernacle United Methodist Church.
But despite his busy life, he always had time for his family.
“He taught me how to sew, fish, and hunt,” Daddato said.
Evelyn Mathewson, his middle daughter, said Pullen and his wife, Martha Jane—who was his high school sweetheart and to whom he was married for 80 years—traveled the country several times over in their Winnebago.
“He took thousands of pictures [during those trips],” Mathewson said.
Pullen was born near Chicago in 1924. He grew up on the family chicken farm. In World War II, he was a Navy traffic controller, serving on Martha’s Vineyard. During the war, his parents, Leonard and Hilda Pullen, moved to Virginia, and he relocated to Spotsylvania after the war.
He and his family lived in the same house in the Chancellor area for decades.
“We had a garden, and we ate off the land,” Daddato said. She credits her father’s longevity to his healthy lifestyle, love of family, and busy life of service.
“He did a lot for his community,” she said.
Pullen celebrated his 100th birthday with his three children—Evelyn, Martha, and son Duncan—plus grandchildren, nieces, nephews, in-laws, and the staff of Marian Manor, where he’s lived since January of this year.
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