Tow Truck Parade to Honor Warren Roosevelt, Sr.
Please join the Roosevelt family and the officers and directors of the Empire State Towing and Recovery Association (ESTRA) in honoring one of ESTRA’s founding members, Warren P. Roosevelt, Sr., with a tow truck parade on Saturday, July 30, 2016. Warren died in Punta Gorda, Florida on Friday, July 15, 2016 after a long and gallant battle with prostate cancer.
Parade Details
Parade participants will start to queue up at around 8:00 a.m. on July 30 at Roosevelt’s Towing & Recovery, 210 Erie Boulevard in Canajoharie, New York; the parade will kick off at 9:15. Warren’s cremains (his cremated remains) will be riding shotgun in the lead truck, a brand new Western Star with a Century 7035 wrecker body, which will be driven by his son, J.R. Limousines carrying family members will follow, along with a 2016 Kenworth with a Vulcan V30 wrecker body, which will be driven by his son, Greg, and the other parade participants. The parade will proceed past Warren’s old garage in Palatine Bridge and continue down Route 5 toward Fonda, where it will pause at the Yost rest area, where Warren’s cremains will be ceremoniously transferred to Greg’s truck.
The procession will then resume down Route 5, past the original Roosevelt garage in Fonda, which was opened by Warren’s father, Melfred W. “Jake” Roosevelt in 1937, and turn onto Route 30A, where it will proceed past the Roosevelt homestead. Shortly thereafter, Greg’s truck and the limos will detour into Evergreen Cemetery on Sand Flats Road, where there will be a brief private gravesite service. The remainder of the parade participants will continue on to the Holiday Inn in Johnstown, where refreshments will be served from 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. The family will rejoin the parade participants immediately after the gravesite service.
A Legend in the Industry, A Friend to All
A current posting in Tow-411 marked Warren’s passing in this way: “Sad day in Industry, a legend has passed.” Warren was, indeed, a legend in the towing industry. In addition to being a founding member and past officer and trustee of ESTRA, he was a charter member of TRAA, a vice-president of the International Towing Association, and one of the original six “Friends of Towing,” who founded the International Towing and Recovery Hall of Fame and Museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Warren’s beautifully restored 1948 bubble-nose Chevy with a Holmes 515E wrecker body resides in the museum, and he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1989.
Warren began his long career in the towing and automotive industry in 1954, when he went into business with his father, who ran a Chevrolet and Oldsmobile dealership and engaged in light-duty towing. The two gradually moved into heavy-duty towing and became authorized NYS Thruway towers in 1974 – the longest tenured towers on the Thruway. Warren took over the business from his father in the early 1980s, opening a satellite garage in Cobleskill, New York in 1990. Both garages engage in heavy- and light-duty truck inspections, repairs, and body work. Warren turned the keys to the business over to his sons in 2006, but remained active in ESTRA, the museum and community affairs.
Warren’s professional accomplishments only tell part of the story. He never met a tow show that he didn’t like and made friends wherever he went. As stated in another posting on Tow 411: “I don’t think anyone had a bad word to say of him, which in this industry is a testament to the kind of individual he was.”
Please make every effort to join the parade and pay tribute to Warren, one of the greats of the towing industry. For more info, call ESTRA at 1-888-85-ESTRA