Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
On March 2, the 1936 American Lafrance ladder truck saw the light of day for the first time in decades as it was hauled out of Brenda Ricotilli Murphy’s airplane hangar in Marlinton as the first step of the journey to its new home in New York.
Murphy inherited the truck from her dad, Tony Ricotilli, who bought it from the Marlinton Volunteer Fire Department in 1975. Ricotilli was a long standing member of the fire department and wanted to keep the fire truck for parades and special occasions.
The truck has a long history of service spanning decades and multiple states.
On October 31, 1965, the truck was purchased by Marlinton Volunteer Fire Department and joined a fleet of three trucks and an ambulance.
Members of the department traveled to Ocean City, Maryland, to pick up the truck and had a very chilly ride home.
“My brother, Doug Dunbrack, one of my cousins, Jack Daniels, and Tony Ricotilli – there may have been more – they went up there and drove the truck back,” Tommy Dunbrack recalled.
“They were telling a tale about how cold it was. They had to alternate drivers because it was an open cab truck. Those old trucks didn’t have heaters in them, so it was just like driving a convertible all the way.”
Dunbrack added that the large truck probably couldn’t have gone faster than 45 miles per hour, so it was not only a cold trip, but also a long one.
“They thought it was kind of fun,” he said.
The truck was purchased as a necessity because it was deemed by the state that all towns with buildings that were at least three stories tall had to have a fire department equipped with a ladder truck.
“We had the truck because of the insurance underwriters,” Dunbrack said. “We had more three story buildings then than we do now, and they wanted you to have a truck that could ladder those buildings and it would make cheaper insurance.
“That was the reason they bought the truck was to help get cheaper insurance for everybody within the corporation limits.”
The truck was indeed a ladder truck, but it wasn’t the easiest piece of equipment to work with. Luckily, it wasn’t often needed.
“It was never really used,” Dunbrack said. “It just had wooden ladders on it. The only time that it was ever used as a ladder truck was when we had the fire at the [Marlinton] high school, and I think that was September 67. One of the ladders was put up – the fifty-foot, three-section ladder. We put it up on the building to get water into the upper floors.”
Dunbrack and Bill Clendenen were first to enter the school during the fire, but they quickly realized this was a fire to fight from the outside.
“The fire started up in the auditorium and we were in there fighting the fire and, of course, we didn’t have smoke masks and all that at that time,” he said. “We got too hot, it got too smoky for us, and we had to back out. Then it was all just an exterior attack on the fire.”
Because the truck was old, the wooden ladders were worn and became water logged by the end of the fire. It was a chore to get them back in place on the truck once it returned to the fire department.
“After that, I don’t remember if they sent all the ladders or just the one big one, but the high school carpentry class took at least one of the big ladders and redid it. They sanded it down and re-varnished it so it would operate a little bit better.”
By 1975, the truck was decommissioned and replaced by a Tele-Squirt that Dunbrack and Ricotilli went to Missouri to bring back to Marlinton.
“It had a fifty-foot ladder on it,” Dunbrack said. “It was all automated and had a nozzle at the top and you could operate it from down on the floor board of the truck, or you could be on the ladder and you could move it 360 degrees.”
The truck was taken to Vinton, Virginia, to be outfitted, and took its place among the fleet later that year.
Although he’s not sure when Ricotilli purchased the 1936 truck from the department, Dunbrack said it was transported to the airplane hangar in 1975 or 76.
“It was a relic, and its day had come,” he said.
The truck was used several times in parades and then returned to the hangar to wait for its new journey.
“I drove it through one of the Pioneer Days parades, when Tony was the owner and we took it to Elkins to the fireman’s parade one year, but it broke down over there and we had to tow it back.”
A cousin of Murphy’s advertised the truck online and a collector in New York purchased it. It was picked up March 2 and headed out of town on a flatbed to its new home.
“They’re tickled with it, and I asked them to keep in contact,” Murphy said. “I really want to see it when they get it restored.”
The truck has had a long life of service to fire departments and will live on, once restored, as a reminder of the good old days.
Ricotilli served as fire chief at Marlinton Volunteer Fire Department from 1987 to his death in 1998. Just like the truck, his legacy continues to live on in the memories of his family and fellow firefighters.
