CENTRE– You may have noticed a piece of history leading Friday morning’s silent first-responder procession through Centre. It may also have looked strangely familiar.

The red-and-white Mack carried large F.D.N.Y. lettering and the number 99 on its cab. Across its front, a simple message read: “9-11-2001 — Words Cannot Express….”

Some people along the route had, in fact, seen the truck before. However, they may have seen it years ago and hundreds of miles away. Back then, it played a New York City fire engine on national television.

Truck 99 appeared as Engine 99 during the opening season of the FX drama “Rescue Me”. That was long before the Mack came to the Ellisville Fire Department. Before television, it spent its first career with the Hackensack Fire Department in New Jersey. After Sept. 11, 2001, it wore FDNY colors and helped carry fallen firefighters to their final resting places.

On the 25th anniversary of the attacks, that same Mack led Cherokee County’s 9/11 remembrance procession. The route carried it from Cherokee Plaza, past students outside the community’s middle and elementary schools, and to the Cherokee County Courthouse.

Its emergency lights flashed. Its siren remained silent.

The truck’s appearance outside the courthouse raised a natural question. How did a fire engine tied to New York and Sept. 11 funerals reach Ellisville? And how did a major television series fit into that journey?

The answer took WEIS through more than four decades of fire-service history.

Following the Clues on the Truck

At first, the clues were visible on the apparatus itself. They included the Mack name, its distinctive cab and body, the oversized 99, and the memorial lettering above the grille.

Those details led to an archival apparatus photograph made in 2004 by fire-truck photographer and Hackensack firefighter Michael Martinelli. His photograph shows the same split-windshield Mack, body configuration, paint, striping, and large 99. Even the Sept. 11 message across the front matches.

Martinelli’s caption identifies a 1984 Mack CF with a Ward 79 body. It carried a 1,000-gallon-per-minute pump and a 500-gallon water tank. The caption also names it as a former Hackensack engine and the Engine 99 used on “Rescue Me.”

From there, the trail led to the City of Hackensack’s own official fire department history. That record supplies the engine’s early life, serial number, post-Sept. 11 assignment, and path to television.

The Hackensack Fire Department purchased two Mack/Ward 79 pumpers in 1984. Each cost $148,962, and both arrived in lime green. The truck that would eventually become Ellisville’s Truck 99 entered service as Hackensack Engine 301 on April 15, 1985. Its serial number was CF611FC2262.

In 1996, Hackensack spent $30,000 refurbishing the engine. Crews repaired its body and electrical systems. They also repainted it white over red, creating an appearance Cherokee County residents would recognize today.

Four years later, Hackensack traded the Mack toward the purchase of a new Pierce engine. The city received $25,000 in trade. Meanwhile, the dealer listed the former Engine 301 for $55,000. It then sat at a fire-apparatus dealership in Pennsylvania for about a year.

Then came Sept. 11, 2001.

A Fire Engine Called Into a Nation’s Mourning

Whether the Mack responded to the Sept. 11 attacks is not known. It was a serviceable apparatus in the broader region, making such a role plausible. However, WEIS found no dispatch or apparatus record placing it at Ground Zero.

Its role in the days that followed is much clearer.

According to Hackensack’s official history, the Mack’s cab was repainted and striped in FDNY colors immediately after Sept. 11. The apparatus then served in several firefighters’ funerals.

For part of that period, Hackensack kept the truck at its fire headquarters. That arrangement spared FDNY Squad 41 members repeated trips from the Bronx to the Pennsylvania dealership.

The detail carries a terrible weight. Squad 41 lost six members when the World Trade Center towers fell. In the months that followed, surviving members searched Ground Zero for the men they had lost.

During a Friday conversation with WEIS, Ellisville Fire Chief Daniel Richardson discussed what his department had been told about the Mack. Richardson did not know its complete history, although he knew the engine had appeared in a television series.

He said sources told the department that the truck transported firefighters’ caskets in processions after Sept. 11. Evidence of that solemn work was still attached when Ellisville received it. Hardware used to secure the caskets remained on the apparatus.

Ellisville firefighters later removed that hardware as they prepared the Mack for continued fire service in Cherokee County.

It was not placed behind a rope or retired as a museum piece. It went back to work.

From Funeral Duty to “Rescue Me”

After its funeral assignment ended, the engine returned to the Pennsylvania dealer. Its next chapter began in 2003, when Brindlee Mountain Fire Apparatus bought it for $5,000.

The Alabama company later received a contract to provide two fire engines for “Rescue Me.” Denis Leary and Peter Tolan created the new FX series. The drama followed firefighters at a fictional New York firehouse as they answered calls. Away from those calls, they struggled with grief, survivor’s guilt, addiction, family strain, and the lasting wounds of Sept. 11.

Leary played firefighter Tommy Gavin, a man haunted by those he could not save. Gavin also mourned a fellow firefighter who was his cousin. At the center of the fictional firehouse were Ladder 62 and Engine 99.

The old Hackensack Mack became that Engine 99.

Hackensack’s official history states that the truck appeared throughout the program’s 2004 run after the first episode. In addition, a television-vehicle archive identifies the Mack as Engine 99 in the series’ second episode.

The number on the cab, therefore, did not come from Hackensack or Ellisville. It came from television. Yet the truck behind the fictional number already carried a real connection to the loss the series tried to portray.

That gives its screen role an unusual depth. “Rescue Me” used a real fire engine that had already served firefighters in mourning. The Mack was not merely dressed to look like a piece of post-Sept. 11 New York. It had already been part of that story.

The Road to Ellisville

After its television work, the engine returned to Brindlee Mountain. Later, it made its way to the Ellisville Fire Department. Richardson confirmed that Ellisville acquired it through Brindlee Mountain. That fact completes the trail from New Jersey and New York to North Alabama.

Today, the Mack is more than a conversation piece. It remains an active Ellisville fire truck more than 40 years after entering service. The engine still carries equipment and remains available to answer calls.

However, Friday morning gave it a different assignment.

Truck 99 moved to the front of Cherokee County’s procession as first responders left Cherokee Plaza for the courthouse. Students stood along the route to show their support. Many were born long after the attacks. They know Sept. 11 only through photographs, video, classroom lessons, and the stories handed down to them.

Leading them was an engine that had lived several of those stories.

First came its service as a lime-green Hackensack pumper. Later, it became a red-and-white FDNY tribute engine used during firefighters’ funerals. Television carried it into homes across America as Engine 99 on “Rescue Me.” Finally, it found a new firehouse and a continuing mission with volunteers in Ellisville.

On Friday, all of those chapters traveled together down the streets of Centre.

The hardware that once held caskets is gone. The television cameras are gone. Yet the large 99, the FDNY colors, and the message across the front remain.

On Friday, one fire engine became a bridge between those who remember Sept. 11 and children who know it only as history.

Its siren remained silent.

Its story did not.

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