We continue this week with another look at a captain of the Thornton Heights Engine 6 call company. Lester G. Conner was born in 1912 at 17 Union St. in South Portland. The house that he was born in would end up being located right next to the Engine 6 fire station that was built in 1939 at 15 Union St.

Lester Conner’s father, John, had first moved to South Portland when he got a job at the Rolling Mill in Ligonia. Lester would end up driving trucks for the Bancroft and Martin rolling mill.

According to Lester’s daughter, Ruth, one of her dad’s most memorable, and scary, experiences was when he had to drive one of the Bancroft and Martin trucks up Mt. Washington with a load of steel for a construction job being done up there.

During World War II, Lester enlisted in the Army Air Corps and served from 1942 to 1945. His daughter, Ruth, shared an interesting story about him during the war: “My dad was a World War II pilot assigned to the China-Burma-India Theater who flew ‘The Hump.’ He was ultimately involved in an air attack while in flight, and though his plane did not go down, he was wounded. He used to share the story with us, showing the scars he had on his left arm and shoulder. After that he was grounded (no longer able to fly) and assigned to an airbase in Jakarta, Indonesia, as a firefighter, where he gained the firefighting experience that he put to use after the war.”

Conner married Charlotte Elizabeth Perry in 1945. They had four children together. Some of the other jobs that Conner held over his lifetime included working as a security guard at Thompson’s Point, in security at Porteous, Mitchell and Braun, and as an investigator for the American Bureau of Investigation.

Lester Conner first joined the Engine 6 call company in the mid-1950s and served as the company captain from 1961 to 1967. He has the third longest tenure as captain of that company, after the current captain (Phil Viola has been serving as captain since 2007), and Frank Demarino (who served as captain from 1936 to 1948).

Conner also worked in the South Portland Police Department.

His daughter has memories of this, as well: “He did, for a while, ride overnight shifts in a patrol car. I mostly recall him working, directing traffic near many construction sites. I recall him doing this at the site of the recently demolished St. John’s Catholic church in Thornton Heights when it was being expanded in the 1960s, when Olde English Village was under construction, but there were other sites he worked, too.”

Note to readers: The South Portland Historical Society’s ornament fundraiser is going on now. All seven of the ornaments, including this year’s Engine 6 ornament, are available at Drillen Hardware, Broadway Variety, and Embers

Stoves & Fireplaces. Please plan to use cash or check for your ornament purchase as these businesses are very generously selling the ornaments on our behalf – all proceeds go directly to the historical society.

If you’d like to use a credit card, if you’d like to make a purchase of a large number of ornaments, or if you’d like to have an ornament shipped (for an additional $5), please call the society directly at 207-767-7299. Thank you.

Kathryn Onos DiPhilippo is executive director of the South Portland Historical Society.

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