It was Christmas night, and a member of Cecil Post 15 of the American Legion in Elkton was home enjoying the holiday. Suddenly, in one Legionnaire's home, the phone rang. "Hospital calling!" the voice on the line said.
"There's been a serious automobile accident near Rising Sun," the operator urgently continued. "If we can get the boy to a Baltimore hospital right away, there'll be a chance for him."
Members of the Elkton Legion, rushing to where the ambulance was housed, rolled out on an "errand of mercy." After darting 17 miles to the accident, the doctor told them "to step on it" for the boy still had a chance.
"Dashing madly" through the Maryland night, with two traffic officers opening up the road, they ate up the miles to Baltimore, reaching the hospital an hour and 40 minutes after the phone's jarring ring. But the trip had been in vain, reported the American Legion Monthly in 1929. Despite the ambulance's best efforts, the boy died.
Except for its sad outcome, this run was typical of the type that ambulance "drivers" at Cecil Post 15 encountered year in and year out as they operated the county's only ambulance. It had been just a few years earlier they had proposed the service.
About the time the Legion started discussing the idea, an accident occurred that demonstrated the need for an emergency unit. The Federal Express of the Pennsylvania Railroad derailed near North East one January day. Two hundred passengers were shaken up and one lady broke her ankle.
Later, as the wreck crew cleared the tracks, a rail buckled, breaking bones and seriously injuring two workmen, John Elmer and Edward Lewis. These men, though they needed an ambulance, had to wait until a passenger car was found to rush them to the hospital. Had medical transportation been available, suffering would have been alleviated, said the Cecil Star, the newspaper in North East.
While train wrecks didn't happen all that often, heart attacks and other everyday medical emergencies were common enough. For these sick and injured, they were "jolted over county roads on a bed of straw in the bottom of a farm wagon; at other times they were jammed in the backs of touring cars," the Cecil Whig noted.
To illustrate its point, the Whig described a lady who was taken to the hospital after having a stroke. Her family tried to pull her into a small coupe, but failed. Then a touring car was found. After a great deal of effort, accompanied by obvious discomfort, she was finally put in the back seat of the car.
Seeing that the person who was incapacitated faced a grim ordeal, members of the American Legion decided to raise money for an ambulance and operate it themselves. And that they did in short order, raising more $7,000 through a community drive.
The Legion bought an Imperial Cadillac from H.M. Duyckinck of Rising Sun at a cost of $4,500. A parade and dance marked the inauguration of the service. Post Commander John K. Burkley spoke of the spirit that had inspired the post to push for the vehicle.
Union Hospital received calls for the ambulance, relaying requests to the Legion. A "chief driver" assembled a crew, and got the unit on the road. Near the end of 1926, the vehicle had already answered 124 calls.
When the Legion discontinued service in 1933, because of the growing financial burden, an Elkton garage operator and mayor of the town, Taylor McKenney, stepped in to fill the gap. Having acquired the Cadillac, he repaired and repainted it, and announced he was running the vehicle on a fee basis.
As delivery of health care moved from home to hospital, the task of providing service became more demanding. In 1942, Singerly Fire Company purchased an ambulance, thus beginning fire company-based service here.
"It was just a hearse and you had two Red Cross flags and no siren," recalls Henry Metz, a member of the fire company who, nearly 60 years ago, rode that ambulance on calls. "Finally, someone bought a little siren, one about the size of a bicycle siren and put it on front."
From that point forward, the person having a heart attack, the individual lying in a pool of blood or the men or women experiencing other medical problems could be assured help was on the way.
It wasn't long before other areas of the county began ambulance service. The Maryland State Police had an ambulance in the Conowingo Barracks, a 1936 Plymouth. Corporal John Stewart Landbeck, Sr., second in command of the barracks for a period during the 1940's, said the ambulance was mostly used for accident calls. "If we didn't have an officer at the barracks, we would call someone off the road to drive to the scene." Landbeck recalled.
In the years that followed, additional units were needed. One Wednesday afternoon in June 1953, town police officer Ottis Ferguson cruised the streets of North East in a specially designated police car, a combination patrol vehicle and ambulance. The town had purchased it with the assistance of town merchants and the public.
The fire company said it would house the unit in "one of the garages in the rear of the fire house at night," the Advertiser and Perryville News reported. Officials said Arnette Armour, Elmer Jones and R. T. Meekins would serve as auxiliary drivers.
Meanwhile, other fire companies soon entered the field. The Community Fire Company of Perryville bought a used unit from Harford Memorial Hospital in April 1955. Rising Sun followed in November. The next year, North East bought a Buick.
Chesapeake City got an ambulance in 1963. Water Witch of Port Deposit formed its service in 1964, after acquiring a second hand unit from Oxford, Pennsylvania.
With units now placed around the county, the next improvement involved advances in emergency medical care. At first, ambulance service advanced from that of "scoop and run" to one that could carry out basic first aid and life-saving steps.
Units were carrying resuscitators by the 1960s. On calls crews would gather up an oxygen tank, splints, bandages and blankets as they dashed to the aid of a victim.
By the dawn of the 1970s, the nation was ready to use its trauma-care experience from the Vietnam War to improve survival from accidents and medical emergencies. The days when someone could drive to an accident scene, bundle the injured into the back of the ambulance and cart them off to the hospital were quickly fading.
In the first step toward providing pre-hospital care, fire company members form the area started completing the Emergency Medical Technician courses. This training expanded their capabilities well beyond those of the earlier personnel. Now they were learning techniques such as patient assessment, cardiopulmonary resuscitation and fracture and shock management.
Even more advanced training lay ahead. As part of a pilot program for the county, 10 members of Singerly Fire Company started on the long road to becoming certified medics or Cardiac Rescue Technician (CRT) in 1977.
After many hours of classroom lectures, study and hands-on experience under the supervision of the county's first CRT instructor, Frank Muller, (who is now Director of Cecil County Department of Emergency Services) the first five providers hit the road in 1978.
These board-certified individuals administered drugs intravenously at the direction of a physician, intubated patients and used defibrillators to aid heart attack patients. Telemetry enabled them to send the electrocardiograms of heart attack victims by radio to a physician at Union Hospital's emergency room.
Shirley Herring remembers completing the state certification over 20 years ago. "It was a big step toward the paramedic system that we have now," she said. "When I think about it now, I feel like a pioneer."
At the request of county volunteer fire companies, paid county paramedics were introduced in 1988. On their first day of service two paid units responded to five accidents.
Advances in training and medical technology continued and in 1991, 22 individuals committed themselves to even more hours of classroom study, grueling tests and clinical shifts in the hospitals, as they become paramedics. According to Michael J. Browne, Deputy Chief of Cecil County Department of Emergency Services and the instructor for the course, the graduation of that group marked the completion of the first full paramedic-training program in Cecil County.
Nine volunteer ambulance stations provide Emergency Medical Services today and all these companies have personnel trained to the Advanced Life Support level, according to Browne.
Cecil County government assists the volunteer fire companies by running "a supplemental service," Browne adds. "We have three units in service at all times and there are two paramedics on each unit."
This integrated system of volunteer and paid providers responded to some 8,000 calls last year. It is this system of career and volunteer providers, actually Cecil County's Emergency Medical Services Systems, that received statewide recognition as one of the best in Maryland.
The above article was written by Mike Dixon, Public Information Officer for the Cecil County Emergency Operation Center and an active participant of the Cecil County Historical Society.
