Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 17, 1992 TAG: 9201170306
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-10 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Long
BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE
As a teen-ager, Oscar L. Seagle drove a combination hearse and ambulance while working at his father's funeral home in Pulaski.Seagle, now 71, and the 1935 Ford vehicle have gotten back together. But when he drives it today, he wins car show awards - five best-in-class so far, one for each show he's entered.
Of course, he had to do some restoration on the gunmetal-gray vehicle - more than $11,000 worth, for parts and paint alone. He didn't figure in the value of his time. "If I did, we'd be out of the ball park."
An editor from Ford's V-8 Times, who called to ask if she could stop by for about 15 minutes and take a few pictures while passing through Pulaski, estimated its value at $85,000 to $100,000. She ended up staying 2 1/2 hours and using about 16 rolls of film. A story is to run in the periodical this year.
"It was kind of a mess, believe me," Seagle said, when he bought it in October 1990 for $2,600 when the Gem City Iron & Metal Co. in Pulaski auctioned off its inventory after the death of its owner. "And I worked on it for nine solid months."
It had been sold when Seagle's father retired in 1953. His uncle, who had started the Seaver Bros. Furniture and Funeral business with his father, later started his own funeral home, which still operates here.
The hearse-ambulance was used more or less as a truck for the next three years. Judging by its license plates, it had not been operated since 1957. Its left front fender had gotten torn up and half of it had been cut off. "Every piece of it was there, including the hub caps," Seagle said. "I rebuilt the starter, generator, carburetor and all that."
Some of the accessories came to him in other, almost serendipitous, ways.
In 1983, he and his wife, Mickey, were browsing through a used furniture warehouse in Pulaski when he recognized the wooden flower racks from the old vehicle. He bought them for $5 and stored them away, with no idea he would ever be able to mount them in their vehicle again. "Didn't even know where it was."
His brother had given him two "Seagle Brothers" side door plates from the vehicle in 1957, and Seagle later passed them on to his son who cut off the "Brothers" part and had them mounted on a yard light at his home in Pennsylvania. When the son sold the home in 1987, he gave them back.
Last April, six months after he had bought the hearse at the auction, Seagle noticed an old ambulance cot that a friend of his had painted green and was using as a porch chaise lounge. It looked like the one that had been used in the old vehicle.
The friend, Vance Leeson, confirmed that he had indeed bought it after Seagle's father died in 1957 and all assets of the business had been auctioned off. Seagle asked if he would consider selling it now. "Give me $5 and take it with you," Leeson said.
Seagle even found three of the old wheeled carriers, which fit under the seat of the hearse, at Gem City. It was, he said, as if the "old girl" was just meant to come home to him again.
And it really is almost back home. Seagle, who left Pulaski at age 19 and worked in Pennsylvania, New York, Florida and the Virgin Islands before returning to the New River Valley as an engineer at Radford arsenal, now lives less than two blocks from his boyhood home where the hearse was housed.
He and his wife share an interest in vintage cars and own 10 of them. "We have so many that we have to have fleet insurance, like a taxi cab company," he said. But the 1935 Ford is their oldest and was probably hardest to restore.
"I had a good time finding that fender. I could have replaced it with fiberglass, but then it wouldn't have been authentic," he said. He finally located one in Akron, Ohio.
He has used all Ford parts in the vehicle, a factor in car-show judging. "If the head of the bolt is turned the wrong way, you get points knocked off," he said.
He used acid to etch the authentic "1936 Ford safety glass" emblem onto the new windows, removed the surface rust, refinished the interior wooden window frames, found an antique tire specialist in Tennessee to replace the tires, got its horn and siren working again, and pulled out the 85-horsepower motor and took it to Pilot Mountain, N.C., to be re-manufactured. "When I got it back, it was like brand new," he said.
The window shades still have their original metal rollers. "The springs still work," he said, demonstrating one of them.
He found a medallion in the vehicle indicating it had been "stretched" by The Shop of Siebert in Toledo, Ohio. Ford made no limousines or hearses, but companies like Siebert would cut them apart and insert the extra footage and doors.
And that wasn't all. "Replaced all the wiring in it, every bit of it . . . to the original specifications," he said. "The engine is painted with Ford green, the original engine color . . . The upholstery is as close to the original as I could find."
But it is obvious, when Seagle drives the vehicle out to be photographed, that he is immensely proud of it.
"There's a lot of work in that sucker, but I enjoyed every minute of it," he said.