One of the finest moments in Akron’s history came immediately after one of the worst moments in the country’s history.
If you’re at least 25 years old, you probably will never forget the psychological devastation that swept the nation following the 9/11 terrorist attacks a decade and a half ago.
Instead of just cowering or brooding, though, the people of Greater Akron decided to do something.
When the Beacon Journal launched a fund drive to raise money for a firetruck for New York City, 50,000 people contributed. A staggering $1.4 million was collected in less than a month, most of it from individuals, rather than corporations.
Our money bought NYC’s bravest a 95-foot ladder truck — the biggest in the entire fleet — as well as two ambulances and three police cruisers.
The department had lost 343 firefighters and 98 vehicles.
Akron’s philanthropy quite literally saved lives. Hundreds of them.
Five years ago, as the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approached, I paid a visit to our truck at its home in the Woodside neighborhood of Queens.
After 62,500 miles, it was bruised and battered. Scrapes here, dents there, paint missing all around. But the bronze plaque next to the driver’s door remained spotless:
“A gift from the people of Greater Akron, Ohio, in honor of the victims of September 11, 2001.”
The guys at Ladder 163 spoke about the Akron truck with a fondness normally reserved for family members. They told me tale after tale of rescues made possible by the bucket that could extend 95 feet into the air. A couple of the rescues were so dramatic that they made the newspapers.
“At least hundreds of lives,” said veteran firefighter Tim Tolan, who participated in our truck’s maiden run and countless more after that. “It’s a busy truck.”
It was a busy truck. It’s no longer in service.
By union contract, every fire vehicle in the city must be replaced after 11 years.
The Fire Department told me last week that our truck was taken out of service on May 30, 2013, and used as a spare until Oct. 25 of that year, when it was sent to the New York Department of Citywide Administrative Services to be auctioned off.
Sigh.
The Fire Department doesn’t know who bought it, and the administrative services office has not yet responded to a request for that information.
Well, at least our big-ticket item lasted a lot longer than the ambulances and police cars, which were put out to pasture long before I visited Queens. In the Big Apple, the life expectancy of an ambulance is only five years on the front lines and a couple more as a spare. It’s even shorter for police cars.
Emergency vehicles simply don’t last long in a city where the streets are narrow and rough, the traffic relentless and the drivers often irascible.
Our $950,000 “tower ladder” unit was one of the most important pieces of fire equipment in the city of 8 million people. In 2011, the FDNY fleet consisted of 2,000 vehicles, only 140 of which were ladder trucks and only 14 others capable of lifting a bucket as high as ours.
I will continue to chase the answer to where our truck has gone. But even if we never find out, we should take comfort in the fact that we not only saved lives, but also made a name for our city.
Tom McDonald, a former assistant commissioner of FDNY, told me that, although donations came pouring in from almost everywhere, no other city in the country contributed more money than Akron.
He had never heard of us before that. He has been singing our praises ever since.
When McDonald visited Akron in the summer of 2002, he was treated like a rock star. “I was a little overwhelmed how much people cared and how they felt about the suffering and everything that we were going through.”
The most remarkable aspect of the fund drive was how much of the money consisted of small donations. Yes, the Beacon Journal contributed $25,000, Acme came through with $15,000 and the Akron Fire Department’s sale of T-shirts netted a hefty $40,000. But the vast majority came from individuals who donated 5 bucks, 10 bucks, maybe 25 bucks.
Kids raided piggy banks. Parents ran bake sales. Motorists dropped dollar bills into firefighter boots on street corners.
As former Beacon Journal Publisher James N. Crutchfield wrote in a column introducing the drive, buying a firetruck for the folks in New York “won’t be an answer to their prayers. We don’t have that power. Our gift will be a symbol — an opportunity for the people of our community to give something to show that this community cared.”
This community did care — more than any other community in America.
And that’s something to be proud of.
Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com. He also is on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bob.dyer.