Mary confirmed the identity of the man behind the wheel--wearing a hat as he usually did--when she put on her "better glasses."

"He had an accident as a young boy and his right hand was not right, so I could see that also to confirm," said Haltom. "Again, with good glasses," she joked.

Hodges bought the fire engine from the San Marino Fire Department in 1957. The department sold the engine in an effort to raise funds to purchase new equipment. Old No. 1 visited birthday parties, weddings and family celebrations for 18 years. Mary and her dad also cruised the engine around town.

"We had such good memories with Old No. 1--driving through town and to what was the Huntington Hotel, now the Langham," Haltom recalls.

But the proposal, which the Arlington County Board is scheduled to vote on Tuesday night, has generated a swell of opposition — from African American neighbors worried that this proud yet painful chapter of their history will be forgotten, and from residents of all races who say a fire station at the county’s preferred site eight blocks north won’t solve the response-time problem.

The controversy is the latest example of a persistent challenge in this densely populated county just outside the nation’s capital: The demand for infrastructure competes with a desire for green space, even as tight municipal budgets force officials to look for the most economical ways to build and preserve modern facilities.

The saga of Fire Station 8 started about a year ago, when residents learned that the county planned to close the building and move the crew. People mobilized, including three descendants of those first firefighters: Wilma Jones, Kitty Clark Stevenson and Marguarite Reed Gooden.

But opponents of moving the station are also citing the county’s own data, which shows more than twice as many 911 calls from the more densely populated area around the existing fire station than from the county’s northernmost neighborhoods, which are primarily composed of affluent, single-family homes.

The county also wants to encourage new high-rise developments along Lee Highway in the coming decades, adding to the number of residents — and, presumably, 911 calls — close to the existing station.

While construction was completed in just over a year, Carter and Jensen both noted there was at least one setback — a spring storm that brought 100 mph-plus wind gusts.

"We had just put the trusses up and the insulation down," Carter said. "Before we could get the metal (roof) down, we had a 100 mph windstorm. We had a problem."

With the station complete, Jensen said the fire crew will be better able to meet the needs of the district, which extends from Yakima and Benton counties to west of Cleveland and from the Yakama reservation to Alderdale.