By Sue Moore
The Kalamazoo Gazette
VICKSBURG, Mich. — The evolution of ambulance service in South County will be the focus of a July 21 program.
“You haven’t lived until you’ve performed CPR in the back of a moving ambulance,” said longtime volunteer Nancy Decker as she talked about her years as part of the Vicksburg Ambulance Service, now known as South County EMS.
The Vicksburg Historical Society will feature Decker; her mother and former volunteer, Anna Brown; former volunteer Bob Eberstein; and ambulance service director Tracy McMillan on a panel reviewing the history of ambulance service in Vicksburg and Schoolcraft. The meeting will take place at 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 21, at the Ambulance and Fire Service building behind the hospital on Boulevard Street in Vicksburg.
The care and transporting of critically ill patients has come a long way since the early 1900s when the local funeral homes provided this service. Marilyn Durham, of Life Story Funeral Home in Vicksburg, recalled how her father cut out the front seat of the family car, put a cot in its place and called it a “sedan ambulance.” She never asked to borrow that particular vehicle, she says.
Even before this advance in transportation to the hospital, there were horse-drawn funeral carriages, pressed into service as ambulances. Sometimes, even the local doctor would take his own patients to the hospital, Durham said.
This all came to an abrupt halt in the early 1960s, when the state decided there needed to be rules and regulations. They decreed that funeral directors could no longer perform this service unless they were licensed and passed extensive exams. The Public Health Department stipulated that those driving and riding in the ambulance must have Advanced Life Support certification, which was expensive and time-consuming to obtain. Thus, the volunteer ambulance services were born in Schoolcraft and Vicksburg at about the same time.
Panelists for the Historical Society’s evening program will talk about their efforts to gain recruits and have them on call around the clock. In Vicksburg, the upstairs above what is now Rawlinson’s Appliance was the headquarters, and in Schoolcraft it was the old village Pump House.
“We were proud to get something like this going. The dedication involved was unbelievable and the hours in class and on duty were not paid for at all,” said current ambulance service director McMillan, of Schoolcraft.
Brown, who is now 93, was one of the original volunteers, once it was determined that women could serve. “I always wanted to be a nurse, but my dad couldn’t afford to send me to school,” she said. Her husband, Ralph Brown, already was a volunteer, and their daughter Nancy Brown Decker joined up in 1971.
Decker’s first call was a glider accident with LeRoy Van Maanen on duty as the driver. “I was never so happy as to see Mall City Ambulance arrive on the scene first,” she said.
That said, Decker has made thousands of runs in her 38 years with the service, and her mother has chalked up 25 years.
In 1994, it became clear that a lack of volunteers and sufficient funding in both communities dictated a collaborative effort. One authority was formed under the aegis of Bob Thompson, Schoolcraft Township Supervisor at the time.
“This has been a successful and mutually beneficial joint effort,” McMillan said. “It has improved response time; we have around-the-clock staffers who are paid and highly trained,” he said. “We cover 144 square miles as part of our responsibilities, with backup from Life Care EMS, Pride Care and other out-of-county ambulance services when needed.”
The audience will be invited to participate with stories of their own about what life was like when they were volunteers in Schoolcraft and Vicksburg. The program will be videotaped and archived for reference purposes at the Depot Museum on Richardson Street in Vicksburg.
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