ORANGE PARK – The day the plane went down, Johnny Van Zant was working in the yard with his father Lacy, a former trucker who “spared not the rod.”

It was October, and a cool one, so they left the front door open as they worked. Living on the Westside of Jacksonville had left them leery of burglars – but guns dashed those fears.

From the open door, his father heard the phone ring, so he hollered at Johnny to go grab it. On the phone was Alan Walden, the band’s manager at the time.

“He said, ‘hey where’s your dad at, there’s been a plane crash’,” Van Zant said.

The television in front of him confirmed it – Lynyrd Skynyrd’s plane had gone down. His brother, Ronnie Van Zant, two other band members and two pilots lost their lives that day.

“And so the rest of it kind of, you know, sucked,” Van Zant, the current lead singer of Lynyrd Skynyrd said. “It was a blur. If you experience tragedy in your life I think your brain says ‘OK I don’t want to remember certain stuff’.”

Next year marks 30 years since the plane crash that took his brother’s life on October 20, 1977, three days after the release of the chart-topping album “Street Survivors.” The band’s chartered Convair plane ran out of fuel near the end of the flight from Greenville, South Carolina, on the way to a gig in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

This weekend will mark the completion of Johnny Van Zant’s two-year endeavor to give a new voice to something his brother treasured – a 55 Chevy pickup. For Johnny Van Zant, however, the vehicle is a bit more than a 60-year-old truck, it’s the last place he saw his brother alive.

“It’s part of the family,” Johnny Van Zant said. “Last time I seen him he was in that truck, so it means that much to me.”

He and Jim Signorile, the general manager of Fields Cadillac of Jacksonville, weren’t in any rush to complete the project, however. A nut here, a bolt there when the service orders slowed enough to allow Tony Stoner, the project’s mechanic, to give the truck some more attention.

Some things had to go – the clunky transmission, the engine, the old Maaco paint job. The steering wheel stayed, a memento in a moveable memorial.

In all actuality, there was a huge amount of work to be done.

“He took it to the frame,” Signorile said.

The truck had no power breaks or steering, a shot air conditioner, which in Florida makes the vehicle all but useless. It had a stone-age engine, so they gutted it and sandblasted it to the frame, a process which Van Zant said cost “a pretty good penny.”

Not to mention the new crate 350 motor they’re throwing in there. By the end of the remodel, the Chevy will be a far cry from the dilapidated state it was in when Signorile towed it from Van Zant’s barn two years ago.

Perhaps due to the condition of the vehicle, or perhaps due to the memories attached to the vehicle, it’s switched hands between Donnie Van Zant of .38 Special and the brother’s father. When Johnny Van Zant finally got a hold of it, the fenders only hung on by virtue of Bondo glue.

Previous remodels brought limited results due to a lack of funds on the family’s part. There was, however, a time when he sent the truck down to Nashville so a now-defunct show on the Country Music Television network could remodel the truck. When the television show went bankrupt two years later, he had to appear before a judge to prove the truck belonged to him.

Van Zant said that all the work and investment would be worth it, because once the remodel is completed, Van Zant intends to show the car.

The 55 Chevy, however, isn’t the only of Ronnie Van Zant’s vehicles that Signorile’s shop has worked on. There was also his 72 Jeep, which now sits in Johnny Van Zant’s garage.

“They’ll be keepsakes, and who knows, maybe they’ll end up in a museum someday,” he said. “It’ll be a cool thing to have, it’s going to be really nice.”

If not in a museum, Van Zant said that he’s going to pass it to his children or grandchildren when he dies.

This time, he knows the remodel will go correctly, because both Van Zant and Signorile want to see Ronnie Van Zant’s memory entombed in something so special to him.

“Once I got it back to Florida I said it’s never leaving my sight again,” Van Zant said. “That truck, in my mind’s eye, is not going to leave Florida. It can, as long as I’m with it.”