It took a village.
So said ex-Greenport Fire Chief Cliff Harris, who spoke at today’s re-dedication of a 1933 Mack fire truck, Ole 33, back to the village fire department.
A crowd turned out for the celebration, enjoying hot dogs and hamburgers as Harris described the truck’s rich history, and how a love of tradition and a deep brotherhood between neighbors and lifelong friends helped to save the fire truck from the junkman and preserve it for future generations — and a new chapter in Greenport history.
Also attending the event were three village men who have devoted decades of service to the Greenport Fire Department: Nelson Beebe, Billy Mills, and Bob White, who reflected back on the evolution of the fire department over generations.
Beebe, 90, said the department has changed, with completely different equipment; gone are the days when men would ride on the back.
“We’d get dressed on the back,” laughed Ed Siebon.
Beebe, who once drove the restored fire truck, said today, the department has roughly half the members it did decades ago, with young people either unable to find the time to volunteer or moving because they can’t afford to live on the North Fork.
Mills said the friendships he’s made among fellow firefighters are lifelong.
White, 89, agreed. “There’s a camaraderie. It’s just an honor to serve,” he said. He joined the fire department as soon as finished his tour of service in 1946, and has been an active member for 70 years.
Harris said it had been a longtime dream of his to bring a restored truck back to the department, and commended the volunteers, especially the “can do crew,” who refused to give up on the project.
Giving a history of the fire truck, Harris said it was “christened with a quart of milk” on January 16, 1934. “The very next day, it was called to its first fire. It is said it takes a village to raise a child. Well, it took a village to resurrect an antique fire truck.”
The Star Hose truck was first put into service back in 1933, said John Grilli, current Greenport Fire Department warden. The truck was a familiar sight around the village until it was taken out of service in 1962, when it was put in the hands of the village board.
Bob Jester, who joined the fire department at 18, because he wanted to continue his family’s legacy of community service, had a fierce love for the truck.
“When I was younger, my dad used to drive the truck,” he said. “We lived on Fifth Avenue and I remember seeing it when I was a kid as it carried members to the cemetery. I remembered the truck fondly.”
Jester even tried to buy the truck. “I always loved it and, when I was 18, all I had was $618. I offered $618 to the mayor to sell it to me.”
Parts disappeared, he said, during the time that the village had used the truck for a sewer pumper; the vehicle was “cannibalized.”
Later, the truck was left outside in the park for well over a year. Jester was the last person to drive the truck before it was parked and left to the elements. The passage of time took a devastating toll, he said. “Everything that could be taken off, was taken off. It was totally destroyed. Within a year and a half, you’d have a hard time telling it was a firetruck.”
By 1978, Greenport’s Al Herzog asked Jester if he was still interested in purchasing the truck. “The Greenport village board was about to sell it to the junk man,” Jester said.
When he said he would like to save the truck, Herzog spoke to George Hubbard, and just under the wire, with only hours to spare before the junk man took the truck, the village board agreed to sell a piece of Greenport history to Jester for the princely sum of $10.
But Jester estimates that the fire truck responded to well over 500 blazes by 1952, approaching 1,100 alarms in total before it was put out of service in 1962.
The fire truck remained with Jester until 1987, when former Greenport Village Trustee Jamie Mills stepped in to save the day.
The two men worked together to decide the truck’s future. “I told him it would be a gentleman’s agreement. I said I’d give him the truck if he would promise that it would never leave Greenport. He agreed, and we shook hands.”
Mills, Jester said, took great pride in working on the fire truck, restoring it until it was “beautiful, and running nicely.”
Harris said under Mills’ care, the fire truck was part of New York City Fire Department’s 125th anniversary parade in 1990.
But once again, Mother Nature was unkind: The fire truck was left in an outside building and, during a snowstorm, the roof fell in on the truck. Mills covered the truck and it stayed at the site until two-and-a-half years ago, Jester said.
“I was the keeper,” Mills said. “No one owns a firetruck. Just like a firehouse, one becomes the keeper of the legacy.”
Reflecting on his time with the truck, Mills said, “Bob Jester, the savior, passed it on to me to restore. A number of years after I restored it, I ran out of space and with the help of a family of raccoons it again fell into disrepair. When approached, I gladly offered it to the fire department, so they could be the next keeper.”
Jester reached out to the Greenport Fire Department, and the journey toward restoration began, with a committee in place.
Jester said Grilli’s whole family, including his wife Jen and son Jared, worked tirelessly on the project. Jared, he said, “worked as hard as any person on that truck. He’d be underneath, with grease and oil on his face. Some nights we’d have to shut off the lights to the building, so he’d leave, because he had school the next day.”
Charlie Hydell, who restored all the gleaming woodwork, and George Capon were also critical to the project’s completion, both Grilli and Jester said.
Capon presented the wives of all the volunteers with flowers, thanking them for the hours their families spend dedicated to the mission.
“The doctors told me I had five years to live, and I told them I’d like the fire truck finished in five years,” Capon said. “It was done in three-and-a-half, and I’m still here.”
Jester thanked the late Mayor George Hubbard for being a forever supporter of Greenport.
Then, he presented Mills with an antique bell that Mills had bought for the firetruck, now engraved and a piece of history that he can cherish always, thanking him for being a keeper of the legacy. Mills, he said, is a true friend to Greenport, a third generation member of the fire department, as well as committed through his work on the village board and in his family business, Wm. J. Mills & Co., a bastion in the Greenport for generations.
The admiration and friendship was mutual: Mills said Jester was the heart of the fire truck’s new life.”We wouldn’t be here, but for that man,” he said.
Harris said he looked forward to seeing Ole 33 in its new life, at parades and giving Santa rides, and bringing fire fighters to their final resting place.
