A tribute to the Morrison family:

As I sit here going over some of my old news stories of fires and plane crashes in Hopkinton, I come upon the paper dated Thursday, Dec. 15, 1955, just over 70 years ago, with the headline “Four dead in Hopkinton fire.”

To my knowledge, this was the worst loss of life in a Hopkinton fire in the last 100 years.

Quoted from the Framingham News: “The lives of four members of the Morrison family were snuffed out at 12:15 a.m. this morning when the explosion of two space heaters tore their Granite Street home apart and then turned it into a huge bonfire. The victims were:

“George Morrison, 47, a guard at the Boston Navy Yard;

“Mae Morrison, his wife;

Mrs. Florence Morrison, 70, his mother;

Peter Morrison, 9, their son.

“Their son Roy, 11, was in Framingham Union Hospital for one night following a tonsillectomy.

“Their daughter Mary was a registered nurse at Mt. Auburn Hospital, and [daughter] Francis was a nursing student at Cambridge City Hospital.”

At the time, all Hopkinton firefighters were volunteers. Thirty were from Hopkinton, and 10 were from Woodville.

A part-time Hopkinton Police patrolman was on his way home from duty at the new Massachusetts Turnpike construction site and spotted a flash in the sky. He investigated and found a home on Granite Street near Lumber Street fully involved in a fire. He drove about a mile to Club Leo (now Cornell’s Irish Pub), where he used the phone there to alert the Fire Department.

When the Fire Department reached the scene, there was no hope of even entering the building, because by then the second floor already had collapsed.

There were no fire hydrants on the street, so water had to be tanked in from a hydrant on Hayden Rowe, about a mile away.

An irony was, Mr. Morrison usually worked nights. He had taken the night off because his son was in the hospital that one night, having had his tonsils removed. The son normally would have been home, and the father wouldn’t have been at home.

This fire was a catalyst to het a movement started for full-time firefighters in Hopkinton.

Seven years later, in 1962, two men were hired to man the fire station from 7 a.m.-5 p.m., six days a week, and volunteer firefighters were hired to have one man cover the station from 7 a.m.-5 p.m. on Sundays.

Five years later, in 1967, two more firefighters were hired so coverage would be 24 hours a day. I was one of them, and that June I worked the first scheduled night shift. Since then, the fire station has had coverage 24/7 all 365 days of the year.

Today, the Fire Department has seven firefighters on each shift covering the town. And fire safety has come a long way in the past 70 years.

First, unvented kerosene space heaters have been outlawed.

Second, there must be smoke detectors in every house — new or old, when it is sold. Fact: The Town of Hopkinton was the first city or town in Massachusetts to require “hardwired” smoke detectors.

Third, fire equipment has gotten much better over those 70 years, and fire training also is more extensive.

Looking back, I can say that tragic fire that happened to the Morrison family when I was 15 years old was one of the reasons I became a firefighter.