For five generations the Brooks family of Mechanicsville has served our country in the armed forces. The youngest includes six brothers — Frazier, Leon, Gary, GeRald, Avus and Eric. They are all military veterans following in the footsteps of their father Oscar and their forebears who came before him.

From the Virginia Army National Guard to the Air National Guard to the Air Force to the Army to the National Guard, the Brooks brothers have answered the call to service. Some served in combat in places like Vietnam, Iraq, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

All retired now, the five brothers who remain in Mechanicsville (Eric lives in Florida) recently shared stories around a table at First Union Baptist Church. 

The Rev. Samuel Davies wrote to a friend, “I want to live after I am dead, not in name, but in public usefulness.”

Three hundred years after his birth, he continues to live on through his espousal of religious freedom and his impact on a young man whose cry of “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” still resounds in the hearts and minds of Americans.

The Rev. Samuel Davies was the leader of a group of Hanoverians who dissented from the notion that all must belong to the established Church of England. His Presbyterians sought religious freedom to worship in their own way, and many of them met in what we know as the historic Polegreen Church on Rural Point Road.

Hanover County Fire-EMS cut the ribbon on its new state-of-the-art Class B burn building. The $3.9 million tactical training tower offers a safer environment for firefighters to train for residential, commercial and technical rescues.