6/14/07 10:09 PM
skirrits wrote:
As a long time member of fire and rescue, plus a 3rd generation funeral director, I enjoyed reading the article on the rescue squads, especially the Blacksburg VA squad as it is only 5 miles from me. Our funeral home provided ambulance service to Montgomery County & surrounding areas from 1925 - 1969 when we, along with the other funeral homes, finally had to give it up. I made my first ambulance run at age 12 in a 1948 Packard (which I have recently restored). I rode along as my Dad and another man took a new Mother and baby home from the hospital. In those days, Mothers & baby stayed in the hospital a week following delivery and then went home by ambulance, a far cry from today's practice. Our funeral home always operated two 'straight ambulances,' along with two 'combinations,' which could be used as an ambulance and/or hearse. Seldom did we ever use our combinations as a hearse, however. We operated "3-way' hearses and did not have to use the combinations for double duty except in rare cases. I am proud to say, also, that in a time when many (if not most) funeral homes carried only a stretcher and maybe a first aid kit, all our ambulances had state of the art medical equipment for the day, from the 20s through the 60s. Granted, today's EMS equipment is a far cry from the 'state of the art' equipment of that day, but we had what was available. During the 1920s, 30s and 40s, our fleet was all Packard. We switched to Cadillac in 1951 and started adding some Pontiac ambulances in 1958. We would run a Pontiac as first out on automoble accidents, followed by one of the Cadillac ambulances. Both had huge engines and, especially in the 1950s and 60s, there was room to run them. During the polio epidemic of the 50s our ambulances made numerous emergency runs to the large hospitals in Roanoke and Charlottesville, VA. I can recall relays being set up with funeral homes from far SW Virginia transporting polio patients . . . our area, on Rt. 11, would usually be a transfer point and one of our ambulances would transport from here on, usually our 1948 Packard (which had plenty of working room in the back) or our 51 or 52 Cadillac. When we went out of the service in 1969 we had two Cadillacs, a 1964 ambulance and a 66 combination, and two Pontiacs, a 66 and a 68. It was getting to the point, in 1969, where we had to choose between the funeral service or the ambulance service. Everyone knows (at least, all funeral directors) that the ambulance service was a money losing thing. We were charging $3 for a local call and $12.50 for a transport to the hospitals in Roanoke, 35 miles away! But, I was young back then and I enjoyed it. Sure couldn't do it today! We ran about 35-40 ambulance calls a month, compared to the local rescue squad's 300 a month today, plus the non-emergency work done by the paid companies & the hospital ambulances! No way we could do that today! But, for some fifty years, ambulance service fell to the local funeral homes mainly because they (1) had vehicles capable of carrying a patient or patients lying down (2) had a staff available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year who (3) knew the territory and the people and (4) usually had some medical knowledge. All to often, however, especially in smaller areas, the funeral homes only had one vehicle, the hearse, which doubled as the ambulance and a 'one man operation' & the owner would call the local gas station attendant, store clerk or whoever he could, to take the ambulance many times. I could tell story after story of ambulance runs, but, it;s getting late!
BLESSINGS!
