After An International Journey,

Antique Fire Gear Has Found Its Way Home

By Shannon Hicks

A package that arrived a few weeks ago at the Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire & Rescue main station has put some closure on something that started a few months back with an email out of Canada.

The package came from a fire department in Belleville, in the southeastern region of the Ontario province, and included an old firefighter’s jacket dating to the 1950s and a helmet from the late 1940s. Both have Sandy Hook labels on them, and both seem to have found their way back home.

Karin Halstead, the secretary for Sandy Hook Fire & Rescue, received an email last November from Carson Cross, the training officer for Belleville Fire Department. Mr Cross had been given the items by a woman whose husband had been a volunteer firefighter in Portland. The husband died four years ago and she did not want the items to simply gather dust, Mr Cross’s email indicated, so she donated them to her hometown fire department.

Mr Cross, in turn, decided to look into where the equipment had originated. While searching for Sandy Hook fire companies online, one of his searches led him to Connecticut. As the company secretary, Ms Halstead was on the receiving end of that email.

“We played email tag for a while, but then his notes stopped,” she said. Mr Cross had computer issues during the holiday season, she later learned. “We reconnected around St Patrick’s Day and everything fell into place quickly.”

The coat and helmet arrived in Sandy Hook on Tuesday, April 6.

The coat dates to the 1950s, based on its style and coloring. It is a dark khaki color, with a red and black flannel lining, a light brown corduroy collar, and a few strips of reflective tape. It is a very lightweight jacket, a far cry from the turnout gear worn by today’s firefighters that incorporate layers of Kevlar and other protective fabrics. Stacked across the back of the coat are the words Sandy Hook and Strano, indicating the company and name of the person to whom the gear was assigned.

A label inside the jacket identifies the maker as The Globe Manufacturing Co. of Pittsfield, N.H. Two additional lines offer a space for the owner’s name and fire company. The name on the label is illegible but appears to be different than Strano. The company name, however, is clearly Sandy Hook.

Similarly, the helmet is much different from the gear of the modern firefighter. The interior of the helmet has no cushioning, and there are no chin straps. The badge on the helmet simply says Sandy Hook FD, whereas today’s badges include not only the company’s name but also the identification number assigned to its wearer.

The helmet was built by Cairns & Bros, who was able to identify the helmet as dating to 1949 by tracking the model number on the label, said Ms Halstead. And while the helmet is yellow, an investigation of the paint job quickly reveals that the helmet was originally manufactured to be black and was painted over, probably by someone in Sandy Hook, at some point.

“For a while, we could only order helmets in black or white, so we had to do our own adjustments, like painting a helmet yellow,” said Sandy Hook Firefighter John Will. “This may have been yellow to designate an officer’s rank, perhaps captain or lieutenant.”

One mystery continues, however, and that is: How did these two pieces of gear find their way to Canada in the first place?

Firefighters often trade patches and T-shirts when visiting departments other than their own. Sandy Hook has a display case in one of its hallways filled with patches from companies all over the country, in fact, and Ms Halstead said she planned to send some patches and T-shirts to Belleville FD as a thank you.

But gear? That’s a different story.

“We don’t know how the jacket and helmet found their way to Canada,” admitted Ms Halstead. “One theory is that one of our members traded the pieces with someone in a company up there.”

Mike Lucas, a life member and past chief of Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire & Rescue, is pretty sure the jacket belongs to his nephew, Roger Strano, one of Sandy Hook’s first fire deputies.

Ms Halstead agrees.

“My dad joined the company in 1965, and he recognized the name right away,” she said. Ms Halstead’s father is Bill Halstead, who has served as the chief of Sandy Hook Fire & Rescue since 1978. “My father is a Sandy Hook Fire & Rescue walking history book.”

The most likely scenario is that when Sandy Hook decommissioned some of its older gear at one point, Mr Strano’s coat and the helmet were among the items that were donated to another company.

“We have donated our gear to other companies when we get updated equipment,” Ms Halstead said.

The fire company may not know how some of its gear made it above the US-Canadian border, but its members are thrilled to see the items now and they will be putting them into their permanent collection. With the fire company having been formally established in 1938, these items are among the department’s more historic items.

“We want to put it on display somehow,” said Ms Halstead. “We want to get a display case for it.”