By Carmina Danini
San Antonio Express-News
Copyright 2006 San Antonio Express-News
All Rights Reserved
Until 1974, San Antonians who were injured in an accident and needed treatment were likely to get to the hospital via what a Fire Department historian described as a “high-speed, horizontal taxi ride” in a hearse doing double duty as an ambulance.
| JAMES DAVID MILLER
Born: Dec. 8, 1928, in Lee’s Summit, Mo. Died: Oct. 21, 2006, in San Antonio Survived by: His wife, Jeane Miller; a son, James Miller Jr. of Austin; a stepdaughter, Patti Stobaugh of Conway, Ark.; two stepsons, Scott Kuburich and Ted Kuburich, both of Springdale, Ark.; and a brother, Frank Blosser of Denver. Services: Public viewing was Wednesday, October 25, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Porter Loring Mortuary at 1101 McCullough Ave.; funeral is on Thursday at 12:30 p.m. at Trinity United Methodist Church at 6800 Wurzbach Road with interment in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. Memorials: Instead of flowers, donations can be sent to the San Antonio Firefighters Benevolent Fund at Fire Station No. 5, 1101 Mason St., San Antonio, 78208. |
Ambulance companies competed for business and a person’s chances of survival were iffy.
All that changed at 12:01 a.m. on March 1, 1974, when the city’s Emergency Medical Services system began operating.
One of the men responsible for putting EMS together was James D. Miller.
Miller had been with the San Antonio Fire Department more than 20 years when then-Fire Chief B.T. Mulhern assigned him in 1972 to work with a task force headed by the Bexar County Medical Society.
“He’s considered the father of EMS in San Antonio for putting it together, plus he was the first EMS director,” said Curtis Franz, a retired firefighter.
Miller, 77, died Saturday at St. Luke’s Baptist Hospital of an apparent heart attack, said a stepson, Ted Kuburich of Springdale, Ark.
Franz said Miller was the perfect man to set up EMS.
Miller had worked at a funeral home and at an ambulance company in San Antonio after leaving the Army and before joining the Fire Department.
“He’d had a little taste of it so when the task was given to the Fire Department to put EMS (together), he knew what to do,” Franz said.
Working with a budget of $1.4 million, Miller had to determine the size of the staff, number of ambulances that would be needed, type of dispatch system and medical supplies, paramedic Gene Mireles wrote in a 2000 history of the Fire Department’s EMS division.
The first class of certified paramedics, all 55 of them, graduated on Feb. 28, 1974. Five hours later, the first shift began work.
At the graduation, Miller, who also took the class, said, “Boys, I don’t know what is going to happen to us. We’ve never done this before. But stay with me and we’ll get through this together.”
Reflecting on EMS 11 years later, Miller said the greatest accomplishment of his career was putting together the system that was saving lives.
“I didn’t do it alone,” he told the San Antonio Express-News. “It was a community effort that included the medical society and all levels of government. I was part of the team. I just happened to be the lucky fellow who was selected to set it up.”