May 20, 2026

By Mary Beth Gahan

Before 1960, when a fire broke out in what is now Flower Mound, a group of men would load their pickup trucks with barrels, fill them with water from a well, and drive to the scene.

Andre Gerault recalled in Sweet Flower Mound Land that Ray Spinks would bring a tractor with a plow so he could stop the spread of a grass fire. They’d use wet burlap sacks to beat the flames.

By the mid-70s, the group had organized into a volunteer fire department. They held weekly meetings on Monday nights and two women – Peggy Totten and Doris Smith — were involved, showing up to the scene to help put out a fire.

Women were the perfect solution to a system that relied on phone calls to members because they were often at home while the men were working out of the neighborhood. They just hoped to have time to change first.

“It isn’t too clever to wear wash-and-wear because sparks tend to ruin them,” Totten told The Denton Record-Chronicle in 1975. “And briers are hard on hosiery.”

In March 1974, the Flower Mound town council agreed to allow the use of $1,000 to purchase firefighting equipment. Community Safety Director George Metarelis and volunteer firefighter Dave Anwyll went to an Army surplus store in Fort Worth, where they found two Army trucks from the World War II era.

“They aren’t much to look at. But I’ll be able to get one good truck out of the both of them,” Anwyll told The Record-Chronicle.

They spent several hundred dollars on the two trucks and were happy with the money they saved. One Mack truck rebuilt would’ve been $2,000 — money they didn’t have.

Anwyll hoped to have the truck running in 90 days, he said.

He was successful in melding the two “cannibalized vehicles.” The fire engine, a 1942 Mack, was more of a pickup truck than the ladder of today’s firefighting equipment. It was significantly cheaper too.

On September 1, 1974, the truck was photographed being driven in a parade down Main Street in Old Town Lewisville. Just above the front bumper, a sign read “We Have Only Just Begun”.

The truck was used at least until the mid-80s until it was put out to pasture, literally.

In 2012, a group of firefighters found out from a former member of the department that the town’s first fire engine had been sitting in a field for decades, the grass around it as high as the truck. The cherry red paint had morphed to rust-colored. A stenciled engine number – 343 – was barely visible. Its hood was caved in. The tires were flat. It didn’t run.

It took nearly 10 years of restoration — a new transmission, engine, driveshaft, etc. — but the truck started up and was drivable in January 2022. After slow progress in the years since, the group has pushed to finish the job.

The Summit Club of Flower Mound teamed up with them recently for the second Hams for 343 sale. Members of the club bought 50 spiral cut hams before Easter, smoked them with a smoker from Flurry’s Market and Provisions, and sold them. All of the proceeds went to the restoration project. Members of the club presented a $2,500 check to Flower Mound Fire Engine 343 Restoration Project at Monday’s meeting.

The money will be used to do the cosmetic repairs to the truck, like painting it and making sure the 343 is highly visible. The number isn’t just the one assigned to the first engine in town. It’s also the number of FDNY firefighters who died on September 11, 2001.