At one time, Richard Shubert thought he would never find a piece of the Hays Fire Department history. A fireman in Hays for 30 years, he also is a historian of the department. What he was looking for was the fire department's first motorized truck, a 1921 REO Speedwagon.
Then one day, he got a call.
On the other end of the call was Brad Corley, a captain in the Wichita Falls, Texas, fire department, who also operates the Wichita Falls Fire and Police Museum. Corley just so happened to have a bit of information for Shubert on the fire truck.
"I didn't figure I could ever find it," Shubert said. "I figured it was scrapped somewhere."
What information Corley did have for Shubert was that he indeed just happened to be the owner of the 1921 fire engine. Not long after the call, Shubert and his wife were on a flight to Dallas, then drove to Wichita Falls to see the antique in person for the first time.
The truck had been purchased by Hays after firefighters Stephen Tourtillot and Nicholas Arnold died in a fire at Ninth and Oak in 1919.
"It was just like a relief that I had found it," Shubert said.
As it just so happened to work out for Corley, who officially retired from the Wichita Falls Fire Department on Friday, he was able to bring the classic fire truck to Hays this weekend. On Saturday, it was displayed in the first Thunder on the Bricks car show in Municipal Park. On Friday evening at the city fire station on Main Street, Corley pulled the truck out of the station and drove it through the department parking lot. He then answered questions for a number of Hays firefighters who came to see the city's first fire engine.
After purchasing the truck, Corley did some fixing and restoration, including rewiring it.
Through a line of historical checking after he purchased the truck from an electrician's family in Lawton, Okla., who had the REO Speedwagon, Corley found the truck had been in Hays. By chance, Corley called Ellis County Rural Fire Chief Darin Myers and told him he had the fire engine.