William A. Pumphrey, Sr., Chief
Past President 1936-1937

  William A. Pumphrey, Sr. the son of Addison and Florence Pumphrey was born in Benfield, Maryland in 1900. As a young man he helped out in his father’s general store and developed the mechanical skills from his experience in repairing the trucks used in the construction of Crain Highway.

  In 1926, William moved to Odenton, Maryland and rented the former Silver’s General Store located on the northwest corner of what is now Morgan and Odenton Roads. He continued to operate this property as a general store while acquiring property across the street where he built a 2 ½ story general store and dwelling on the northeast corner of this same intersection in 1928. William continued to operate Pumphrey’s General Store (which also housed the Odenton Post Office) from 1928 into the early 1940’s with assistance from his wife, Mazie, his two sons, William Jr. and Ray, and his daughter, Lois. Being an enterprising individual, William also established and ran a bus service for transporting local students to the high school in Glen Burnie in the early 1930’s and later expanded the service to meet the needs for transporting the thousands of G.I.’s arriving and departing from the Odenton Rail Station on the Pennsylvania Railroad to and from their barracks on nearby Fort Meade.

  On the evening of April 6, 1931, William A. Pumphrey, Sr. was among those nine concerned citizens who crowded into the office at O’Malley’s Coal Yard for the express purpose of establishing the Odenton Volunteer Fire Company. In William’s case he took this obligation a bit further by volunteering to become the Fire Company’s first President, a position he held from 1931 through 1934. Lacking further nominees to accept the responsibility of Fire Chief, William also stepped forward and assumed the role as the first Fire Chief of the Odenton Volunteer Fire Company. He held the position from 1931 until 1943. William was also responsible for negotiating the approval from the Silver family to allow the Odenton Volunteer Fire Company to establish its first Fire Station in the ground level of Silver’s Warehouse and the use of the upper level as a Fire Hall.

  William was active in the Anne Arundel County Volunteer Firemen’s Association serving as its 5^th President from 1936-1937.

  In consideration of William A. Pumphrey’s dedication to the fire service and his willingness to share his acquired skills as a businessman and mechanic to assure the survival of our Fire Company in those first years and his success in building a strong legacy of community service which his successors have continued to maintain and expand over the past 75 years, the Odenton Volunteer Fire Company proudly submits the name of William A. Pumphrey, Sr. as a nominee for induction into the Anne Arundel County Volunteer Firefighters Association Hall of Fame.