PHOTOS: More than 60 years after Hicksville Volunteer Fire Department’s fire engine was decommissioned, the vintage vehicle has finally returned home.
The engine’s return began last month when former Hicksville Fire Chief Patrick McGeough alerted company historian and former Chief Karl Schweitzer of a posting on the antique apparatus – long thought to be lost to the salvage yard.
“It was sold in ’61 or ’62 and that was the last we saw of it,” said Schweitzer. “Minus the pictures we have of it on our wall. Pat saw [the listing] and asked me if I thought it was one of our old trucks,” Schweitzer continued. “[Pat] said that someone was getting rid of it, so we started reaching out to the owner to verify it was one of ours. And it was.” Within just a few days, the officers of Company 5 received a Facebook message from Andrew Rittner Jr. in Ashford, Conn.