Keep the spirit alive!

As many of you know for the past 7 years Gina Kenyon and myself, Trever Boutin have take anywhere from 15-20 hours per year to string upwards of 40,000 lights onto Grand Isle fire engine 3. Many late nights and head puzzling issues all come to a head once we see the joy and happiness it brings to our little town and surrounding.

8 years ago I saw Ryan Bullis and his John Deere lit up rolling down the road and I thought “isn’t that thing just bad ass! I wonder if we could do something with the old fire engine”.

Now that next year Ryan didn’t know it but I was in a race to finish the engine before he had gotten his tractor finished up. It didn’t happen, found out you can’t string 17 strands of standard lights together. After replacing all the fuses, a few outlet strips and a bunch of extension cords E3 V1 was complete and both Ryan and my self brought Santa to the towns very first tree lighting in 2016!

The next year I set out to improve the truck, make it so we could open the hood as well as compartment doors. Lots of planning went into getting this old girl reliable while being a stand out truck. Every year after I changed up the truck, wheel lights, strobing lights (had to figure out how to synchronize all the runs to flash the same), changed to all LED lights, yearly truck themes, driver & passenger costumes! This truck has truly became something I looked forward to creating every year.

Since 2016 I believe this truck sparked the Christmas spirit back into our small community and truly the community looks forward to seeing it cruise around sSouth Hero, Grand Isle North Hero, sitting idle at the causeway, out front of the department and in our local parades just as much as my do showing the old girl off. E3 hasn’t just created joy and happiness here in grand isle county but at St.Albans Co-Op tractor parade, Operation Fire Cuffs, Essex Christmas parade, and Troy’s annual toy drive.

Unfortunately engines 3’s time at Grand Isle Fire Department has come to an end. The department is putting her up for sale at the end of October. While I would love to light up one of the other trucks, I can’t make it happen with truck that is in service, not I’m the same way I could with engine 3 being a truck out of daily service.

Now if you know me, you know I hate asking for help. It’s not in me to do so, especially when it comes to financial situations. However, over the last few nights i have been kept me up thinking about this truck joy brings to the people of our town. That said I have set up a go fund me and I’m trying to raise enough money to purchase engine 3 from the department so I can keep the spirit alive! I know this truck’s spirit and it’s tradition is loved by so many and I would hate to see that die.