It's a Thursday night and you can see the rain pounding on the pavement outside the open bay doors at the North End Firehouse in New London, but you can't hear it. Instead, the station is filled with the rich sounds of Highland piping and drumming.

It's the regular weekly practice of the New London Firefighter Pipes & Drums, and six bagpipers and five drummers are standing in a circle near a ladder truck, an engine and racks of hose.

Drum Major David Paige raises his ceremonial mace to signal the start of another tune, and as the mace falls, the mournful strains of “Amazing Grace' fill the cavernous bay.

The men and women keep at it for 90 minutes, practicing tunes that they will play at parades, funerals or promotion ceremonies. Before assembling on the street-level concrete bay floor, they meet separately, drummers and pipers, to learn new music.

“It's quite incredible what they've done here,” says Bill Stewart, bagpipe instructor and longtime superintendent of highways in the town of Stonington. “They wanted to have an exclusive New London firefighters pipes and drums band, and they've done it. They're a brotherhood, and what they've done is quite amazing.”

To the best of anyone's knowledge, the 20-member New London band is the only such unit in New England associated with a single municipal fire department. State fire and police units in Connecticut and Massachusetts have pipe and drum bands that draw on members from across each state. There are also municipal departments that sponsor bands, but recruit members from outside their ranks.

In New London, the band is comprised solely of active or retired city firefighters or their direct relatives. It was started in 2001 by firefighter Jonathan Paige, who learned to play the bagpipes seven years ago with the Mystic Highland Pipe Band.

Paige's father, David, retired deputy commissioner of the state Department of Public Safety, is one of a handful of relatives of city firefighters who have joined the troupe. But mostly, it is the men and women who man the city's fire trucks and ambulances, and conduct fire inspections, who march.

It was eight years ago that Jonathan Paige began as a New London firefighter, and shortly after he took up the bagpipe. He had never played an instrument and couldn't read music, but he had an intense interest.

“The fire service and bagpipes have a long history,” says Paige, relating how Scottish and Irish immigrants took jobs as firefighters or policemen in New York City or Boston more than a century ago and brought their Highland and Celtic heritage to work with them. Often they would play the bagpipes at memorial or promotion services, creating the association between emergency service workers and the pipe and drum bands that still exists today.

But the bagpipe is not an easy instrument. It would take Paige two years of daily practice before he was competent to perform publicly. Like other first-time pipers, he started his lessons on a chanter, or melody pipe that looks like a recorder, before graduating to the full bagpipe a year later.

A reed instrument with several drone pipes and the chanter all attached to a bag held under the arm, the bagpipe requires commitment. The player blows into the bag and squeezes with the arm, creating a constant flow of air to feed the pipes, allowing a continuous drone.

“Learning to play was not as hard for me as learning to read the music, that was much more difficult. I'd practice every day, for 30 to 60 minutes,” says Paige.

Those practices often took place at the city's South End Firehouse, where Paige is assigned. He took some needling, he says, but mostly, colleagues were supportive. Finally, he knew about a half dozen tunes, and was ready to play with the Highland band. He was also playing at fire department functions, like promotions and retirement parties, and had piqued the interest of his co-workers.

“People here just started expressing an interest in wanting to learn how to play, for much the same reasons that I did,” he says. “They were inspired because they're involved in the fire service.”

Soon Paige had five recruits and asked Stewart, the bagpipe instructor, to consider teaching them, too. He agreed, and started making his weekly treks to New London. The idea grew, and other firefighters asked to play the drums. Paige sought the help of drum instructor Bob Copely, a city resident who is retired from Pratt & Whitney.

Initially the players thought about joining the Connecticut Firefighter Pipes & Drums, but practices were nearly halfway across the state. Paige thought if he could get enough players, New London could have its own firefighter band. The fledgling pipers and drummers liked the idea and organized in 2001. More firefighters and relatives joined, and the group made its first local public appearance at a Memorial Day parade in 2002, where it rained.

Although the city's fire department allows them to practice at the city's firehouses and allows on-duty members to practice unless a call comes in, the pipers and drummers depend on fund-raising and out-of-pocket money to pay for their instruments and decorative garb. The department's administration and its union, as well as neighboring fire departments, have been hugely supportive, says Paige.

Members wear a red, black, white, and purple kilt: the black over red signifying smoke over fire, and the purple, a tribute to fallen firefighters. With their spats, hose, flashes, kilt, tunic, belts, cross belts, and hats, the outfits cost $2,000 each. Half the cost is raised through fund-raisers or donations and the balance paid by the band member. They also buy their own instruments, with drums costing $300 to $500 and bagpipes $1,200 to $6,000.

They have so many requests to perform now that they have to turn down most of them, says Paige. Their first priority is fire service-related activities and New London County parades. And when they do perform, anyone who is scheduled to work has to swap a shift or take a vacation day.

“The people who are involved are very, very committed,” says Paige. “They do it because they want to.”

“We're very proud of them, and proud to have them wear the colors of New London,” says Fire Chief Ron Samul, whose civilian son and daughter-in-law, Ron and Tara Samul, play the drum and bagpipe respectively in the band.

“It's a labor of love, it's the only way to describe it, because you have to love it to do it,” says Fire Inspector Bridget Yuknat, one of the original five to take up the bagpipes after Paige forged the way.

On this Thursday, it's damp in the firehouse bay but the pipers and drummers don't seem to notice, so intent are they on their new tunes. They rotate through the city's three firehouses for their practices, and sometimes, in good weather, move the rehearsal to the waterfront pier off Bank Street, bringing along a fire truck or ambulance if some of the players are on duty.

“I'm just so impressed with all of them,” says Copely, the drum teacher. “Whenever a call comes through, even if we're doing lessons, the apparatus goes out. They're just so professional and such a dedicated group.”

“The camaraderie, the respect for the instrument and for what they do, is beyond what you can imagine,” says Stewart. “I'm not a firefighter, but I was brought under their wing ... It's a brotherhood ... and they are dedicated and it is something to behold.” 

© 2004 The Day Publishing Co.