More than a decade ago, Hartford Fire Department rookie Ashley Shapiro was sitting in the South Green fire station waiting for the next call when his captain dropped a rusty, sickle-shaped blade on his desk.
“I hear you like this tool,” Tom Dalton told Shapiro, a history buff who had recently arrived at Engine Company 1 Ladder 6. “Here’s the head. Play around with it.” Dalton had brought Shapiro an original Hartford hook, forged as early as the 1920s in the department’s original machine shop behind their Main Street fire station. It had been a decade or two since Hartford firefighters had carried the tool, though it was once so widely used a stone carving of the hook embellishes the bay doors of the century-old fire house.
Now, Shapiro is bringing back a modern version of the capital city’s unique fire hook.