NEW YORK — East Tennessee stepped in to rally support for New York in the days and weeks after 9/11 — pennies, dollars and big checks helped purchase the "Freedom Engine" for almost $1 million.

Leaders in Knoxville donated it to the city of New York to help replace one of the dozens of fire engines and trucks destroyed in the attacks. The freedom engine responded to hundreds of emergency calls--and stayed on the streets of Harlem for almost a decade.

"There isn't a day I don't think about it at least once," veteran firefighter John Jacovina said in 2016. "We had a purpose down there, so we were there to work through our pain, and the rest of the country had to find ways to get closure to reach out, and people from Tennessee did that, and we are grateful."

Jocovina and his crew worked no

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