This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by [log in to unmask] /-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\ Share the spirit with a gift from Starbucks. Our coffee brewers & espresso machines at special holiday prices. http://www.starbucks.com/shop/subcategory.asp?category_name=Sale/Clearance&ci=274&cookie_test=1 \----------------------------------------------------------/ A Museum for Those Heroes of the Lonely Road January 20, 2002 By KEVIN SACK CHATTANOOGA, Tenn., Jan. 17 - Lyndia Thomas may well have to clear some wall space to honor the heroes of Sept. 11. Not the firefighters or police officers. Not the passengers on United Airlines Flight 93. Praising them will fall to others. Ms. Thomas will be satisfied if she can find a proper way to commemorate men like Anthony Lisi of Lisi's Recovery and Towing Service in Brewster, N.Y., who took his 55-ton tri-axle drop-deck hydraulic trailer to ground zero, knowing that it would be perfect for short- radius turning in Lower Manhattan. As it is, there is little room left at the International Towing and Recovery Hall of Fame and Museum in downtown Chattanooga, not with the portraits of 275 inductees already on the walls. Whatever the accomplishments of Mr. Lisi and others like him, they cannot displace industry stalwarts like Arden Bowman Sr. (Class of 1995), a beloved Nashville tow truck operator who chose to be photographed while chomping on the stub of a stogie, or Jean J. Julien (Class of 1998), a tuxedo-clad Frenchman who pioneered the use of small recovery vehicles in Paris. But Ms. Thomas promises that the contributions of the Sept. 11 tow truck drivers will not be overlooked. Evangelizing for the towing industry, after all, has been the museum's mission since its founding in 1995. "A lot of times," she said, "the men and women of the industry are the unsung heroes of the nation, really of the world. People don't realize they risk their lives daily to help stranded motorists." Ms. Thomas hopes to ensure that the children of the Sept. 11 tow truck drivers understand the role that their parents played in clearing the path for rescue workers. She is soliciting stories and photographs for the museum archives. "We don't want people to forget," she said. For generations, Ms. Thomas said, the media have depicted tow truck drivers in a negative light. "They've always got overalls on and are chewing tobacco and spitting in a cup," she said. "Maybe 5 percent of the industry might be people like that, people out to make a buck who are going to rip you off. The rest are just people out to make a living." Ms. Thomas has little patience with those ill-tempered red-zone parkers and drunken drivers who take out their frustrations on America's tow truck drivers. "You're the one that broke the law," she said. "It's not the tower's fault. Why yell and scream at them? They're just professionals out there doing their job, like the firefighters and the police and the emergency medical technicians." That said, Ms. Thomas seems to understand her market. It is not every museum shop, after all, that sells T-shirts in size XXXXXL. There is a reason, of course, that the museum is in Chattanooga. It was here that a local man, Ernest Holmes Sr., manufactured the first twin-boom wrecker in 1916. Cable from the extra boom could be tied off to a tree or boulder, making the truck more stable while the other cable lifted a vehicle out of a ditch. These days, the twin-boom has been replaced by more powerful hydraulic single-boom trucks. The world's largest manufacturer, Miller Industries, is outside town, in Ooltewah. To walk the heavily waxed checkerboard linoleum in the museum, as 10,000 visitors do annually, is to know an industry's pride. Seventeen trucks are on display, lent by their owners and in mint condition. Ms. Thomas has pet names for most, referring to them with masculine pronouns. There is the Locomobile, a 1913 truck with a 1919 Holmes 485 wrecker apparatus that is insured for $200,000. There is a United States Army Diamond-T wrecker that was used in World War II. And then there is Bubblenose, or Bubba, a 1947 truck that arrived at the museum with some fanfare. "They backed him up the ramp," said Ms. Thomas, daughter of a longtime worker at the Ernest Holmes Company, "and the brakes failed, and he came flying down the ramp, knocked out two windows, fell on Sonny Griffin's car and smashed it." The museum also features magnificently preserved towing hooks, flares and blinking lights, hundreds of toy wreckers and a photograph of the largest towing operation ever tried - pulling a 177-ton excavator off a South African roadside. That job took five tow trucks and two bulldozers, according to Ms. Thomas. The archive holds complete sets of The American Towman and The Tow Times magazines. The bookstore offers "World's Greatest Tow Trucks" and "Knights in Shining Tow Trucks." Ms. Thomas conceded that the museum board had not always been particularly selective. "The first two years they got carried away and inducted anybody that was nominated," she said. Now the board limits its choices to six Americans and two foreigners a year. They must be industry leaders and good family men. Ms. Thomas said that visitors poke one another in the ribs when they spot the handsome brick museum while strolling down Broad Street, usually on the way to better-known attractions like the Tennessee Aquarium. But she said she had had just one unsatisfied customer, a French woman who was dragged along by her tow trucking husband. "He stayed for six hours," she said. "We're only open seven. After the first hour, she was just steaming. She shook her leg a lot. But it didn't matter. He looked at every vehicle." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/20/national/20TOWI.html?ex=1012545506&ei=1&en=236ca99437f5084a HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact Alyson Racer at [log in to unmask] or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to [log in to unmask] Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . 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