A 134-Year-Old Favor, Repaid by Middle Schoolers

In 1867, firefighters in New York raised money to send a hose carriage to Columbia, South Carolina, a city whose fire equipment had been destroyed in the Civil War. The first carriage sank with its ship, so they paid for a second. Columbia's turn to return the favor came 134 years later, after September 11, and it came from a middle school.

A Gift That Went Down Off Cape Hatteras

When the war ended, Columbia's Independent Fire Engine Company had lost most of its equipment, and the city was relying on bucket brigades. Its members appealed to firemen in the North for help.

The New York Firemen's Association raised the money for a hand-drawn hose carriage built by J. H. Sickles. It was shipped south on the steamship Andalusia, which caught fire and sank off Cape Hatteras on March 3, 1867. The carriage went down with it.

The New Yorkers raised more money and sent a second carriage that June. The New York Times described it as polished rosewood, with wheels painted in crimson and gold.

A Hope Said Out Loud

At the presentation, Colonel Samuel W. Melton, a former Confederate officer, spoke for Columbia. The New York Times reported that he said he hoped his city would one day be able to "obey that golden rule by which you have been prompted in the performance of this most munificent kindness to a people in distress."

Some accounts, including a 2001 Associated Press story, describe his words as a promise to return the kindness "should misfortune ever befall the Empire City." The version used here is the one the Times quoted: a hope, not a contract. For more than a century nothing came of it.

Middle Schoolers Take Up the Cause

After the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001, the principal of White Knoll Middle School, near Columbia, Nancy Turner, wanted her students to help in a personal way rather than send money to a large charity. Haunted by images of crushed New York fire trucks, she proposed buying a replacement. "The mood became much more proactive and focused on how we could help," she recalled years later.

She did not know about 1867 when she began. Columbia's fire chief, John Jansen, a New York native, told her the history while she was pricing trucks, and the story spread across the state. The school then adopted Ladder 101 in Red Hook, Brooklyn, which had lost seven firefighters and its ladder truck.

The students held bake sales and car washes, sold T-shirts and buttons, ran a booth at the South Carolina State Fair, and raised $400 by offering haircuts in the school lobby. About 70 of them, in red plastic fire hats, worked the tailgaters with buckets before a University of South Carolina homecoming game. Other schools joined in, and donations came from around the country. In all, the drive raised more than $500,000.

Newspapers at the time described it as Columbia returning New York's 1867 favor.

The Truck Goes to Red Hook

Captain Tom Giordano and three of his men from Ladder 101 traveled to South Carolina as guests of honor of the school, the city and the state. On June 1, 2002, Ladder 101 in Red Hook received the truck. A student delegation also appeared on the Today show and took part in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

The Red Hook company gave the school a mangled piece of the original truck's door, recovered from Ground Zero. In 2026 it went on view in the lobby of the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia, in the exhibition "South Carolina Remembers 9/11: 25 Years Later." It stays there until January 3, 2027.