Robert Godbold: I joined the fire department in 1956 and was a volunteer fireman for 20 years. Cary had an all-volunteer fire department at that time. They'd blow the siren on the corner of Ashworth's drugstore, and the men in town would come and find out where the fire was and go.

By the time of the Page house fire in 1970, when we had a fire call, they would announce over the radio where the fire was and we'd go straight to the fire scene. When I got to the Page house it was burning pretty good. The guys were standing outside. So I got one friend, and went inside.

We were getting ready to go up the stairs to the second floor. We had the thing about 90 percent knocked down when the hydrant's water gave out. They hooked up to another hydrant, and when they got the hose all laid out on the ground, and that's a big job, the hydrant was inactive, it had no water. So we had to go hook up to another hydrant. By the time we got water back to the fire, the house was fully engulfed in flame again.

It burned to the ground. It was a bad, terrible loss.

They had a guy that was living in the back and doing some maintenance. He'd been putting gas in a lawnmower and spilled it. It caught fire. This house was built out of heart pine. When they catch on fire, they're hard to put out. There's not enough water in Cary to put it out. This was a whole house built out of heart pine. Frank Page was in the lumber business, so he built it out of prime lumber, all heart pine.

Later on, the town bought the property and decided to build a new town hall on the land. So Cary town hall stands on the land of the old Page house.

Pete Murdock: I joined the volunteer fire department in 1952. Mr. Midgette was the fire chief when I joined, then I became fire chief for a time.

By the time we got to the Page house fire, it was just about gone. There wasn't that much we could do.

Mary Crowder: The Page house fire was pitiful to stand there and see it. The embers and the ashes came all the way down to our house on Wilkinson Avenue, the fire was so bad.