It was a very long trip, but the East Williston Fire Department’s first fire truck has now rolled into a permanent place of honor in the village.
Village of East Williston East Williston Fire Department officials rededicated the restored 1929 Maxim pumper truck that was the village’s first fire vehicle last Saturday and dedicated the garage built to house the truck at a ceremony attended by village, town, county and fire officials.
“The Maxim restored pumper is a symbol of the pride we feel for our village,” East Williston village historian emeritus Tom Mohrman said at Saturday’s ceremony. “Many volunteers were needed to restore this rusted truck to its current condition.”
The pumper, purchased for $8,000, served the village for 26 years before being retired in 1955 and sold to a construction company for $500.
That was the end of the story until members of the Great Neck Alert Fire Company, searching for one of their company’s vintage trucks Upstate, discovered the ‘29 Maxim pumper in a barn near the Canadian border.
They wiped one side of the engine housing, saw the faded East Williston Fire Department name and alerted their East Williston counterparts.
Great Neck Alert also put the vehicle on a flatbed truck and brought it back to the East Williston department’s headquarters.
The initial phase of the truck’s restoration was completed in the early 1990s, according to Mohrman, who said it’s still “a work in progress.”
He said students in a Wheatley School woodworking class are planning to restore the truck’s wooden running boards later this year.
The restoration work, which to date has cost approximately $30,000, has been paid for by contributions and fundraisers such as the carnival at Wiliston Day, Mohrman said.
No tax dollars, he said, have been used.
“Many volunteers in the fire department have been involved in this for the last 30 years. It’s great that it’s near the finish line now and we’ll be able to start using it on a regular basis,” said former East Williston Fire Department Captain Tom Devaney. “It’s a big piece of the history.”
Devaney said the truck will now become a regular feature at village events.
“It puts smiles on people’s faces,” said Jon Sanneman, president of the East Williston Fire Department Exempts Fireman’s Benevolent Association, who presided at the ceremony.
The Village of East Williston and the fire department raised $30,000 for the construction of a garage to keep the truck in the village. It had previously been garaged in Huntington and other locations since its restoration and brought out for special occasions – beginning with a parade in Great Neck in 1995.
Carlos Pereira and his father Augusto, partners in AM.PORT Design & Construction, built the garage as an addition to the village Department of Public Works building, village officials said. They said the addition was designed by village Building Superintendent Robert Campagna.
“It took us a long time to put it together, this board and the previous board,” Village of East Williston Mayor David Tanner said. “We look forward to this vehicle becoming part of our cultural life here.”
The restoration did not seem possible to Albert Zolezzi, owner of the Williston Park body shop and husband of former Village of East Williston Mayor Nancy Zolezzi, when a friend of his at the fire department pitched him on restoring the fire truck.
“There was nothing left of it,” said Zolezzi, who at the time threw up his hands and walked away from the project.
But one year later when Zolezzi joined the East Williston volunteers, they told him his first project was to restore the ‘29 Maxim.
So, he said, he set up a shop on wheels in the firehouse and started the process of recreating the rotted side panels and the rounded fenders, working from old photos of the truck.
“We fabricated everything,” Zolezzio said.
Zolezzi said the fire department paid for the materials, but he donated his time, working at night over eight years to accomplish the restoration. He said he had to get an “old-timer” he knew to reconstruct the truck’s six-cylinder Buda engine with 12 spark plugs.
Eventually, Zolezzi charged $6,000 to paint the truck.
“I was proud of it,” he said when his work was finished.
But there was still more work to be done.
Robert Keltner spent a year assembling more of the truck’s parts and restored its seats in his private garage in Huntington.
“It was a pleasure and an honor to work on such a unique vehicle with such a long history,” Keltner said.
Robert Neville of Neville Auto and Truck Repair on Denton Avenue in New Hyde Park then stored the truck for two years and work on tuning its engine.
“If this pumper could talk, it would have some great stories to tell,” said Nassau County Legislator Richard Nicolello (R-New Hyde Park) at the ceremony.
Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano said, “It not only represents the history of the fire service in East Williston, but it is a symbol of sacrifice.”
Interim Town of North Hempstead Supervisor John Riordan praised Mohrman and Zolezzi as “very persistent people.”
Riordan said he associated 1929 with the stock market crash, adding, “now I’ll have something else to think about.”
