York Town News
Thanks to local volunteers, firefighters can see clearly now at YFD station
By Virginia L. Woodwell
Matthew Farrer and his son Mason, 15, ready a window for installation in the York Village fire station. Farrer arranged for the York Fire Department to get the windows at cost, and he, Mason and friend Glenn Gobeille donated their time for the installation on Saturday, July 1.
Photo by Virginia Woodwell
YORK VILLAGE - The York Fire Department got new windows all around this week, 30 of them, obtained at cost and shipped and installed for free.
York Fire Chief Chris Balentine estimated that the combined donations saved the town over $6,000.
The chief provider of this largesse was Matthew Farrer.
By day, Farrer, who lives in York, works as an operations manager for the Aulson Company, which contracts to perform environmentally sensitive jobs like removing lead paint from the big Piscataqua River Bridge, restoring a crane at the Bath Iron Works or containing leaks in Boston's Big Dig.
On his own, however, Farrer also runs a local replacement-window business called "Just Windows," and he was replacing some windows for Fred Ricker in York when he learned from Ricker, who has long been a seriously-involved volunteer firefighter for the York Fire Department, that the department was planning some window replacement at the village station.
Farrer went to Balentine with an offer he couldn't refuse: to provide top-of-the-line and state-of-the art replacements not just for some but for all of the station's windows, and to do so at cost.
Farrer did the work on Saturday, July 1, the first day of the long holiday weekend.
Why was he doing this?
"I'm a firm believer in the Bible and the saying, 'You reap what you sew,'" he said, "Besides," he added, laughing, "What's it costing me? A day?"
And he noted that not only had the manufacturer, Ideal Windows of New Jersey, sold him the required windows at cost, but the distributor, Atlantic Coast Building Supply of Woburn, Mass., had charged nothing for the shipping.
Working with Farrer that day were his son, Mason Farrer, 15, a sophomore at York High School, and Glenn Gobeille, a friend.
Farrer began the window-replacement business, he said, chiefly for Mason when Mason was 10, to teach his son a business and a trade, and to introduce him to the work ethic. Now, he said, Mason can "outwork any other carpenter," and is fully capable of executing both interior and exterior carpentry jobs at the highest levels.
Gobeille, whom many may remember as a former long-term owner and manager of the Cape Neddick Inn, said that he was volunteering that day because he owed a debt of gratitude to the fire department. When his inn burned to the ground in 1985, he said, "They saved me."
He added, teasing Farrer, "And I like the guy. He's a slave-driver, but he gets the job done."
Farrer, trimming a window that had been deliberately measured large for a tight fit, reported that the new windows were Ideal's latest models, made of virgin vinyl, fully welded and seamless, built for high insulation value with a large gap between inner and outer panes, engineered to tilt in as well as rise and fall and stop neatly at any point, and tinted to repel ultraviolet light.
He forecast that the fire department would realize major fuel savings as a result of the improved insulation values alone.
Farrer would complete all but one of the 30 installation on Saturday, the last one delayed because, initially as a surprise, he'd engaged to have the department's logo etched on it, but the etching wasn't yet ready.
Balentine tucked two York Fire Department T-shirts in the Farrers' truck for them, by way of his own small thank-you.
"He's a good neighbor," he said of Farrer.
