September 10, 2025 by Geri Duff
This is a rare look inside the Civil Defense Report Center in the basement of Hingham Town Hall in 1942. At that time the Town Offices were at 14 Main St., Hingham Square. Chief Warden Keelah Bouve, Chief Medical Officer Henry Robinson, Chief Engineer T. Clark Perkins, Firefighter C. Warren Lincoln, Police Chief Harold MacFarlane, Assistant to Chief Warden Sally Brewer, Plotting Officer Louis D. Lebel, Filing Clerk Mrs. Linzee S. Hooper, and telephone operators Mrs. Phillips B. Hunt and Mrs. J. Marshall Corthell spent two days in this room during a training exercise designed to test Hingham’s response to a would- be air-raid. This drill was triggered when the Quincy Warning Center sent the test message of approaching aircraft. The town was supposedly bombed from the Naval Ammunition Depot to South Hingham. This photo is from the archives of the Bare Cove Fire Museum.
My great aunt Mary Lincoln was an air raid warden on Gardner Street. There weren’t that many house on Gardner Street ( she lived on upper Gardner) in those days, so she must have had a lot of walking to do. How dedicated were so many volunteers.