Fire Engine Firm Keeps On Truckin’ for New York City

On Rick Goodell’s last trip to New York, he rode in a fire rescue truck, its siren blaring in the night as he raced past the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

It was strictly business. The small-town engineer had come to consult with a big-city firefighter. As they sped along, Capt. Terence Hatton told him the kind of truck he needed for his elite rescue squad.

On Sept. 11, Goodell was at work here designing firetrucks when he heard of the terrorist attacks and immediately thought of Hatton. That morning, Hatton led his final mission for Rescue Co. 1--into the holocaust of the doomed trade center towers.

Three months later, ground zero still smolders, memorials go on and in this timeless town in Middle America, there are personal reasons to mourn: Hundreds of folks here build firetrucks for New York and have a special bond with the city’s firefighters.

“I lost friends; I didn’t lose business associates,” Goodell said. “There’s a deep, aching pit in your stomach. You want to do everything you can to help, but there are just some things that you can’t fix.”

There is something that Goodell and others here can--and will--do for New York: They can build more firetrucks. And fast.

Seagrave Fire Apparatus is rushing to build 54 custom firetrucks for New York after receiving an emergency order in October estimated at $25 million. They will replace some of the 95 pieces of equipment burned, mangled and crushed when the towers came tumbling down.

Normally, it takes up to a year to build a firetruck. These days, the shop floor is humming through the night and Seagrave--with help from its suppliers--plans to do the job in four months, with the first one on its way to New York in January.

“There’s a feeling of urgency,” said John Krubsack, a Seagrave worker and Clintonville’s former fire chief. “I think people are willing to put their best foot forward and do more than what’s expected.”

Trucks are built from scratch--starting with raw metal and finishing with the final coat of candy-apple red paint.

American flags have materialized at work stations. Posters showing a target superimposed over the face of Osama bin Laden have sprouted on bulletin boards. A few employees wear New York firefighter T-shirts.

Seagrave moved here nearly 40 years ago when it was acquired by FWD Corp., which has the original patent for four-wheel-drive vehicles in the United States. It has been supplying fire equipment for New York since 1918, when some city trucks were still drawn by horses.

With 360 workers, Seagrave is the largest employer in town. Its imprint is everywhere--from the high school, where the team nickname is the Truckers (uniforms are flame-like orange and black), to the big August bash, the Firemen’s Festival.

Like many towns across America, Clintonville opened its wallets for New York after Sept. 11. The Fraternal Order of Eagles (its treasurer delivered Seagrave trucks to the city for 15 years) collected $1,350 in vat-sized salad-dressing jars placed around town. Middle school kids pitched in $1,600 of their own cash.

But unlike most towns, folks here know the names and faces of New York firefighters. They’ve shared meals and family photos, attended each other’s parties.

“It starts off as business; then you get to know them, you respect them and it becomes friendship,” said Jim Green, Seagrave’s president.

Green has memories of firefighters killed: He worked with John Fanning, a modest but much-decorated battalion commander, and once gave William Feehan, the first deputy commissioner, a photo showing legendary New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia with a Seagrave truck.

For decades, New York firefighters have come to this town 40 miles west of Green Bay, donning work clothes to inspect every nut and bolt of new trucks before they leave the sprawling brick factory.

Routines have been established--a stop at a nearby cheese factory is not uncommon.

Friendships have been forged at the golf course, where firefighters have played a few rounds with Father Mark Schommer; at the supper club, where they’ve tested their taste buds with owner Matt Oreskovich’s blazing hot raspberry jalapeno sauce, and at Cindy B’s Pub & Grill, where they’ve enjoyed kraut burgers and camaraderie.

Cindy Beery has two scrapbooks stuffed with business cards and photos of firefighters and their families. She knows the names of their children and wives, attended their birthday parties in New York and keeps in touch with about 15 of them.

“They’re family,” she said while thumbing through one book, stopping at photos of herself atop the World Trade Center. “I knew people who died. I knew people who were hurt. I was crying this afternoon.”

A plaque from New York’s Fire Department hangs on her wall with a black mourning ribbon around it.

In happier times, that plaque was delivered by Tom McDonald, assistant commissioner of fleet services for the FDNY. McDonald likes what he sees in this town, whose entire population--4,754--could easily fit in a New York skyscraper.

“It’s Middle America; it’s people who really believe in what they’re doing. It strikes you that their word is their bond,” he said. “And they build one hell of a firetruck.”

New York’s Fire Department has 200 pages of specifications for its trucks, McDonald says, and Seagrave is one of the few companies that meets the challenge.

Seagrave also had a role in the rescue.

The day after the terrorist attacks, workers from Seagrave’s sales and service office in New Jersey were at the disaster site trying to repair burned and disabled trucks.

Seagrave also dispatched filters, windshields, doors and other parts--probably more in 10 days than the company usually delivers in six months, says Green, the president.

Green, who was in Istanbul on business Sept. 11, was climbing around the debris the next week, helping search for identification numbers and other distinguishing marks to identify crushed trucks.

Tom Grein, general manager of the company’s New Jersey office, remembers driving a mangled truck with a smashed windshield off ground zero when a tearful firefighter approached.

“He jumped on the front bumper,” Grein recalled, “reached his hands though the windshield, grabbed me and said, ‘Please fix my truck. It’s the only thing we have left of everybody.’ ”

Polly Goodell, Rick Goodell’s wife, decided that the time was right for her eighth-graders to learn to write condolence letters.

Their compassion moved her.

McDonald was so touched by the letters that he posted many outside his office at the repair shop in Long Island City.

“I personally had lost a lot of friends,” he said. “I read a letter from a boy who didn’t know what to do. He wished he was old enough to donate blood. It was really genuine.”

“You realize the impact it had on young children. Clintonville is a long way from New York,” he said. “It made you feel good that people cared about us. I don’t know how many people would love to adopt New York as their friend and neighbor. But they certainly did.”