Near this spot, a group known as the Redshirts has assembled for York’s annual Firemen’s Parade every August since 1929. Officially the Volunteer Veteran Fireman’s Association of York, Maine, the organization was founded by summer residents working with the fledgling York Volunteer Fire Department. Its members were neither veteran firemen nor even firemen, but the partnership was strong from the beginning because the founders’ wood-frame summer houses stood vacant and vulnerable much of the year, while the volunteer department welcomed encouragement and financial support. Initially there were 29 Redshirts, and by 2016 there were 127, including four honorary members from the York and York Beach Fire Departments. Every third Sunday in August, the Redshirts held their annual meeting, one purpose of which is to pledge financial support to the York and York Beach Fire departments. The night before the annual meeting and their participation in the Fireman’s Parade and Muster, they hold a convivial dinner where, following tradition, members tell stories and sing songs popular after World War I. Early dinners were held in a special room at the Hillcroft, now the York Harbor Inn, and old postcards show the room decorated with prints of 19th century fire scenes and other fire memorabilia. In the parade, the Redshirts, wearing replica 19th century red firemen’s shirts and white pants, pull an antique fire apparatus by hand: an 1853 Button & Blake hand pumper. By the 1800s these classic horse-drawn pumpers were used only for muster competitions between fire companies. The Redshirts procured it from the Fire Department of Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, for their first parade in 1929. Its first home in 1853 was Adrian, Michigan’s firehouse number 2, named Protection, hence its name Protection No. 2. The Redshirts wear the name Protection on their shirts and the number 2 on their hats. By 1878 Protection No. 2 was outmoded, and the Adrian Department sold it that year to Quincy, Massachusetts, for use in competitions. By 1929 it was in York, and that first year the Redshirts, manning the Button, beat the Eureka of Portsmouth in a competition near Harbor Beach that drew a large crowd at the spot where the tennis courts now stand. In 2014 the apparatus received a major refinishing at the hands of Ed Walsh, Assistant Chief (Ret.) of the York department, who sandblasted and repainted every metal piece with assistance from YFD Captain Jack Loew. Walsh’s labor became a symbol of the long relationship between the Redshirts and the York Volunteer Fire Department.