Vintage Pumper Returns Home to IN Fire Department

One early morning back in 2007, Ron Klahr bought a vintage fire truck on a whim through an online auction.

It wasn’t exactly that strange. Like his father and grandpa before him, Klahr had volunteered with the fire department in Randolph, Minn. And being a mechanic and welder, he was good at fixing things.

But that being said, it was an impulse buy that set him back $3,100.

“It was kind of a 2 o’clock in the morning purchase sort of thing,” his son, Rich Klahr, recalled this week. “He woke my mom up and said, ‘I think you might be mad at me.’ ”

His wife, Christine, was not. She understood, knowing full well that he was up to the challenge of restoring the 1965 Chevrolet C60 series pumper tanker he snagged from the Wildcat Township Fire Department out of Windfall, Ind.

Klahr would not get around to doing that, however. He fought several health issues over the next five years and died in March 2012 at age 61.

But about 550 miles south of Randolph are a group of thankful firefighters in Windfall ready to do so.

So Saturday morning, Klahr’s son will jump in his work vehicle — a Wayne’s Transport flatbed truck — and make the roughly nine-hour drive to personally donate the vintage fire truck to the Wildcat Township Fire Department in honor of his dad.

“We are 110 percent appreciative,” said Andy Wesner, fire chief of the small, all-volunteer fire department that covers Windfall and Wildcat Township, located about an hour north of Indianapolis. “It’s going to be a team-building goal for us. And to not have to pay any money to start the project is outstanding. We could not be any happier about what the family and Len (Schrader) are doing for our department.”

HOW DEAL CAME TOGETHER

Schrader is a board member of the Minnesota Fire Engine Club. Two years ago, he took pictures of the fire truck — with its weather-faded paint and weeds growing around it — and sent them to the Wildcat Township Fire Department through Facebook. He wanted to gauge their interest.

The chief at the time showed little interest because they had nowhere put it, Wesner said. But someone did hang one of Schrader’s pictures of the truck — the only one the fire department knows of still available from its past — on a station wall.

“A few Sundays ago, I was sitting there looking at the picture and thinking how we just built a three-bay pole barn,” Wesner said. “So I reached out to Len through Facebook. And that’s how this whole process got started. Because I really wanted to bring back the history of the department.”

FIRE TRUCK’S HISTORY

The fire truck, which was Wildcat Township’s first pumper, was in service until 2005, when the department bought another one. Due to grant rules, the ’65 fire engine had to be sold.

“I actually figured that it probably was gone — we missed our chance — but with Len helping out with all of it, it’s been amazing,” Wesner said. “Within an hour of asking him, he had gotten back with me that it was at the same place where it was before. Within three or four hours, I was talking to the family.”

Wesner said the plan is to try to raise money from the community in order to get the fire truck’s engine up and running, replace the brakes, clutch and tires, and buff the paint, which has been exposed to Minnesota’s weather the past 13 years.

Wesner said the goal is to have the fire truck ready for the department’s 110th anniversary on June 27 and then use it for public relations events, funeral details and parades.

The department will honor Ron with a plaque that will go on Engine 1, he said.

A FAMILY ‘LET’S GO’

The fire truck still means a lot to the family, Klahr said. They have memories of him showing it off to kids in and around Randolph, a sleepy community southeast of Farmington. And using it to embarrass his sister-in-law on her 50th birthday with a cruise through downtown Cannon Falls. And transporting his niece and her husband on their wedding day from the church back into town.

“We had a lot of fun with it,” his son said.

But the family is willing to let it go — in honor of Ron. So at 9 a.m. Saturday, his son will leave the parking lot of Randolph High School and start hauling his dad’s fire truck to Indiana.

A community farewell that Schrader organized will include vintage trucks escorting Klahr out of Randolph and down to U.S. 52.

“I’m very grateful that my dad’s memory will live on with that fire truck, even though it will be nine hours away,” his son said.

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