GRISWOLD, Conn. — A group of local World War I-era veterans wanted to do something to memorialize their fallen comrades, and in their memory they established an ambulance company. That company, Griswold Ambulance (formerly American Legion Ambulance), founded Aug. 2, 1941, finally met its demise last week, just prior to a state hearing scheduled to work out the formal transfer of its service contract to American Ambulance.
The company had been answering calls in the wake of a near-unanimous town meeting vote last winter to award the town’s service contract to American Ambulance of Norwich. When Griswold Ambulance’s workers compensation insurance ran out at the end of the fiscal year June 30, it was obliged to end its work.
“It was from the start a community affair,” said the company’s president, William Czmyr. He said that the veterans established the service in memory of Orville Laflamme, Alphonse Lynch, Charles Pecohie, John Monses and Anthony Zoldik, local men who died in World War I. The war casualties were honored “every time that ambulance went out on a call in Connecticut or Massachusetts,” he said. The company’s first vehicle was a hearse, he said.
Read full story: Griswold Ambulance, founded by war vets, ends its 74-year run