9321-R4_ML&P_TownOfBuxton_2024-2025

This year we dedicate our Town Report to: Sheridan Bennett My father, Sheridan Bennett, 86, started his life-long public service career with a lie, though just a small one. In the late 1950s he wanted to join the Civil Air Patrol in his hometown of Waterboro but he was too young. “I think you had to be 18 to join,” he said, “But I told a fib and said I was 18 even though I was only 17.” The tall tale worked. My father soon learned to identify all sorts of planes, spotting, recording, and reporting their height and direction as part of a series of civilian observers protecting the United States during the height of the Cold War. He eventually racked up hundreds of observation hours and won an award. It felt important. It was also fun, a chance to do his part, working hard alongside his neighbors, toward a useful, common, goal. That enjoyable feeling, earned while doing good with — and for — others never left Sheridan and it’s kept him busy, working and volunteering in his adopted hometown of Buxton for six decades. Since first arriving in the early 1960s, Sheridan has served his neighbors in town government, public safety, public works and emergency management, while also dedicating time to several community organizations. In 1962, at age 22, Sheridan married his high school sweetheart, Janice Reynolds, in a ceremony at the Buxton Center Baptist Church. The couple soon took up residence in Groveville, where Sheridan still lives today. My brother Todd, arrived in 1963 and I followed in 1971. My parents began building their own house on the still unfinished Dunnell Road in 1968. Sheridan joined the Groveville Volunteer Fire Department right after landing in town and in 1982, he was elected assistant chief. The following two years, 1983 and 1984, saw him elevated to the department’s top job. My father’s tenure was not without controversy, however. In October 1983, the department accepted its first female member. Another soon followed. Sheridan supported the department’s gender expansion, reasoning that there were more women at home in town during the day and available to respond to calls. “They had an all-woman daytime crew in Baldwin at the time,” he said, “and it worked fine.” But those were different times and not everyone agreed in the almost all-male department. Internal strife ensued with one female member going to the Maine Human Rights Commission with a case of discrimination. Two years later, after many newspaper and television stories, the case was dropped and everything was smoothed over. But it’s hard to be at the vanguard of change and Sheridan was voted out the next year. My father didn’t quit public service, though. My childhood memories of his time with the fire department are rosy. I remember him having a ball, driving fire trucks in parades festooned with dozens of kids squirting spectators with hand pumps. One year, he rerouted the entire Groveville Fire Department Field Day parade to go by our recently disabled neighbor’s house. It was much appreciated. Tears flowed. I also remember spending many Saturday mornings with my father, filling swimming pools with pump truck water. “That’s how we taught people to run the pumper,” he said. As Groveville chief, he made a special point to give a student at Frank Jewett Elementary School an award for alerting his teachers to a house fire across the street. Also, around this time my father served two terms as the head of the York County Firefighters Association. Sometime before that, he worked weekends as a York County Sheriff’s Department deputy, too, supervising Saturday night dances at the old Buxton Grange Hall. That job also involved serving subpoenas.

3