ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 2, 1997 TAG: 9703030066
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ROCKY MOUNT
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
AFTER PULLING a disappearing act, the 1929 Seagrave Special returned to the town it served for decades.
A long-lost friend has returned home to the town's fire department.
The first fire truck the town ever purchased - a 1929 Seagrave Special - traveled Franklin County fighting blaze after blaze for close to 30 years.
At the time it was purchased - for $8,750 in 1929 - the Seagrave Special was a Rolls-Royce of a fire truck. It could pump 600 gallons of water a minute. Another truck Rocky Mount purchased in 1963 pumped 500 gallons a minute.
"Rocky Mount has one of the most up-to-date pieces of firefighting apparatus of any town its size in the entire South," said a 1936 article in the Franklin News-Post.
In the 1950s, though, the aging Seagrave was sold to a local man for $100. It changed hands several more times after that, and sat for a while on the Callaway used-car lot of Wayne Angell, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors.
In 1972, Angell sold the truck to Eric Miller, then of Salem, for $650, according to research done by Rocky Mount Fire Chief Posey Dillon.
A decade later, Miller sold the truck and it disappeared.
At the same time the truck was being sold from place to place, Dillon was falling in love with its legend. Old firefighters told stories of the Seagrave and its place in Rocky Mount's history.
The stories found a place in Dillon's heart, and he decided that he wanted to find the truck. Dillon, who's been associated with the fire department since 1977, asked people around town about the Seagrave and made dozens of phone calls. Dillon had paperwork on the original truck, including its serial number.
"Everywhere I turned there was a dead end," Dillon said. "So, I pretty much gave up."
He decided he'd try the next best thing - find another Seagrave Special and buy it.
So, in early 1995, he began his search.
* * *
Dillon's passion for the truck comes from the men who have volunteered to put their lives in harm's way for years.
The Rocky Mount Fire Department has been an all-volunteer organization since its inception in 1923. The department has never lost a man to a fire.
To Dillon, a man of much pride and conviction, it's a matter of neighbors helping neighbors from the goodness of their hearts.
"Anybody can pay somebody to do a job," he said.
He, and others with the department, including Billie Robertson, now retired, wanted to find the truck because it's the ultimate symbol of Rocky Mount firefighting spirit.
Robertson, now 80 and a former town fire chief, can recall the days when the truck would roar down the road with its hand-cranked siren blaring.
The driver sat on a bench seat in the open air, exposed to the elements.
Robertson recalled a fireman who drove the truck to Martinsville in subzero weather. The man would lose his hearing because of his willingness to help fight a fire miles from Rocky Mount.
Robertson also recalled Hunt Cooper, the late town councilman and fireman, who could drive the truck like no other.
And driving it wasn't an easy thing to do. It's a manual-drive three-speed with a long metal gearshift rising from the floor. It's got a six-cylinder engine with dual spark plugs on each cylinder and no power steering. The driver, in addition to steering and changing the gears, had to operate levers attached to the steering column to change the timing of the engine.
Robertson said Cooper was at his best when a fire broke out in the Snow Creek area of the county one day about 50 years ago.
A mechanic from Roanoke was working on the Seagrave when the fire call was sounded. The mechanic quickly finished and decided he'd ride with Cooper to the fire.
"When they got there, the man climbed down from the truck and he was white as a sheet of paper," Robertson said. "He looked at some of the men there and said: `Boy, Hunt can sure drive that thing, but if one of you don't mind, I'll catch a ride back to town with somebody else.'''
Robertson, whose son is a Rocky Mount firefighter, can also remember the fire that helped prompt the purchase of the truck- an epic blaze in the late 1920s that destroyed numerous businesses on Main Street and killed several people.
"The Town Council met that morning and decided it needed to buy a fire truck," Robertson said.
And he remembers the last fire the Seagrave fought in the 1950s.
A florist shop was ablaze on Franklin Street. Next door was a liquor store.
As the fire burned up the walls of the flower shop and threatened to jump across to the liquor store, workers there were frantically taking inventory.
Robertson said a prominent local businessman showed up in the middle of the crisis to buy some whiskey.
Employees wouldn't sell him any.
The man exited the store, Robertson recalled, looked at firefighters, and yelled: "Don't put any water on it boys. Let the blankety-blank burn."
* * *
In February 1995, a frustrated Dillon was running out of options to find a Seagrave Special.
He picked up the phone one day and called a Maryland woman who works for Firetec, a company that sells used fire equipment.
"It was a shot in the dark," Dillon said.
Dillon told her he was looking for a Seagrave. The woman told him to call a man named Jack Norman in Massachusetts.
Dillon hung up and called Norman, 49, a retired cross-country trucker and firefighting buff. He's owned 46 fire trucks over the years.
Dillon told Norman what he was looking for and, just in case, gave him the serial number of Rocky Mount's original truck.
Norman said he'd do what he could.
Fifteen minutes later, Dillon's phone rang.
Norman, who had a book detailing antique fire equipment, had a match.
"Your truck is still in Virginia," he told Dillon.
Rocky Mount's 1929 Seagrave was in Chesterfield and was owned by a man named Tom Herman.
"I don't think I've ever talked to a happier man," Norman said of Dillon.
Herman, who helped found the Old Dominion Historical Fire Society, had bought the truck from Eric Miller in 1985. Herman was hoping to restore it to its original form.
Dillon, who could barely hold back his excitement, called him.
"Yeah, I've got one of your trucks here," Herman told Dillon.
"I was so excited at that point," Dillon said, "but I didn't want to come right and ask him if we could have it back."
So Dillon inquired further. He knew that the truck had been hand-painted with a brush years after it was purchased.
Herman confirmed that, indeed, the truck had been hand-painted.
Herman said it was the best thing that could have happened, because the brush painting helped preserve the truck's original markings, including a replica of Bald Knob, the most recognizable landmark in the town.
Herman agreed to sell the truck for $9,000. The town paid $6,000, and a private donation made up the difference.
The truck has been sitting in a bay at the fire department in the middle of town for more than a year now.
When he agreed to part with the truck, Herman made Dillon promise that the town would restore it. Dillon has since learned that Rocky Mount's Seagrave Special was one of only 64 that were manufactured by the company in Columbus, Ohio, from 1926 to 1934. It is apparently the only one that made its way to Virginia.
The truck's engine still runs, but many little things need repair or touching up.
Dillon figures it's going to take $15,000 to $20,000.
There have been several donations already, including $1,500 from DuPont of Martinsville.
Dillon said he'd like to restore the truck and open a small museum inside a section of a building the fire department recently obtained near its present location.
It's a pipe dream at this point, but so was the initial search for the Seagrave.
When he hung up the phone that February day in 1995, Dillon sat down and cried.
"I could not believe that after all those years, everything came together like that in one day."
CINDY PINKSTON STAFF Rocky Mount Fire Chief Posey Dillon tracked down the town's first fire truck, a 1929 Seagrave Special pumping engine. Dillon is hoping to raise enough money to restore the truck to its original condition.
The truck had been painted over by hand, which preserved much of the original detailing.
LENGTH: Long : 165 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON STAFF. 1. Rocky Mount Fire Chief Poseyby CNBDillon tracked down the town's first fire truck, a 1929 Seagrave
Speciqal pumping engine. Dillon is hoping to raise enough money to
restore the truck to its original condition. 2. The truck had been
painted over by hand, which preserved much of the original
detailing. color. 3. Billie Robertson can recall the truck roaring
along with its hand-cranked siren blaring.