[This column was published Jan. 24, 2001.]

When the officers of Peachtree City Fire Department asked me to speak at the department’s awards banquet earlier this month, they said they wanted the newer members to hear how things used to be, to give them an idea of our beginnings.

Several urged me to share my remarks with you. You want to hear how it used to be? Here’s how it used to be.

On a cold day, it was hard to get the horses hitched to the hose-wagon. That was high-tech before that, we formed a bucket brigade. And “communication” was two cans and a long string.

Well, OK, I exaggerate, but we DID bring emergency services into the modern era, and that’s a legacy we cherish. Here’s how it really was: Before about 1970, if you had a fire in Peachtree City, help was rounded up by telephone. Louise Leach, sister of our first chief, M.D. “Brother” Leach, telephoned homes, work places, whatever it took to find people to respond.

If you had a heart attack or an accident, you waited until C.J. Mowell could get here from the funeral home in Fayetteville. (Why didn’t he come from the funeral home here? you rookies might ask. It wasn’t built until 1995, for one thing.) Highway 54 to Fayetteville, only two-lane, didn’t slow him down there were hardly any other cars on the road.

C.J.’s crew had minimal training, usually just first aid, and C.J. was pretty casual about collecting for an ambulance trip. We often speculated on his incentive to get here quickly, knowing he wasn’t going to make any money unless he did a funeral ... This was the scene I found when we moved here in 1971.

I know I was insufferable with my tales of how things were “up North.” But we knew there was a better way, and we started to build it with an emergency rescue class in 1972 through Fayette County Civil Defense (predecessor to FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency). Stan Neely and I took the class with the idea of forming a rescue unit, and so did most of the volunteer firemen (they were fireMEN then).

We had two-way radios, and it was not unusual for me to drive to Fayetteville to pick up the CD emergency van for a house fire, or a missing child, or a heart attack, or a wreck anywhere in the county from Kenwood to Brooks, thus freeing the men to respond with heavy equipment.

At the time I was working for the first and only doctor in Peachtree City, Henry Drake, and he let me take off any time I thought it necessary. Stan had similar flexibility with his employer, then Garden Cities Corp. Eventually, though, with Dr. Drake’s encouragement, it dawned on us that Peachtree City could also have a rescue vehicle and split the county calls.

We got it by going door to door, and to every industry, doing demonstrations of extrication or cardiac support, teaching first aid and CPR whatever it took to raise money for a brand-new 1973 Ford Econovan.

And about the time we got it to where we thought it was state-of-the-art, the feds caught on to the sorry state of things in the country as a whole, and required basic standards in equipment and in training personnel.

Dr. Drake urged us to get EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) training, then offered in Clayton County. C.J. and Dean Pope were in that first class, along with Stan, Al Hogg, Richard Andrews, and I. We were certified early in 1974. At about the same time, City Council allocated grant money to the purchase of our first defibrillator and a heart-lung resuscitator (considered very progressive then) they went on that Econovan.

The doctor authorized us, basic EMTs, to work under his license, and we were carrying IVs and cardiac drugs and defibrillating almost five years before laws proscribed what EMTs could or could not do.

We made history. We were the first and for many years the only volunteer rescue squad doing defibrillation and drug therapy in the field with a doctor’s order if we could get one on the phone, without it if we couldn’t. Later we became the first unit with telemetry.

We saved lives, and when we didn’t, the patient’s family had the comfort of knowing that everything possible had been done that could be done in those times.

In 1975 things started happening. To qualify for federal funds to purchase vehicles that would meet federal standards, a county Emergency Medical System had to be in place. Two modular units were ordered and purchased; with C.J.’s help, one was based in Peachtree City. Later, the city established its own EMS.

We graduated a new class of EMTs every year. The class of ‘75 included my Dave, Paul Talbott, and John Weber. Jack Routon was in the class of ‘77, Gary North in ‘78, to name a few still active.

In 1976, the first advanced EMT (later called paramedic) class started, in Clayton County, and Fayette County had one volunteer in that class, John Weber, who became the first certified paramedic in Fayette County. The following year, three more of us completed the course, and in due time, we divided responsibilities thus: Teams of three EMTs, one of them a paramedic, responded from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., while daytime calls were answered by whoever was in town.

We had just a few radios and swapped them around according to who was available. It took sacrifice by our families, in our personal lives, and by employers who were willing to let us go.

There was not nearly the volume of calls then that there are now we’d have days go by between calls, and then back-to-back calls all day long. Everyone pitched in without complaint.

It may sound haphazard, but believe me, it worked. We never failed to meet a call in a timely manner because we were short of personnel or had equipment failure.

Here’s how it went at night before we had an employee at the fire station (fire station, singular): The call would come in through Louise, maybe via the sheriff’s office. She’d phone the on-duty team at home.

Brother would drive like a bat out of hell to the station. Whoever got there first started the truck, then waited for the other team members.

When we finally got pagers, we thought we were uptown. Before that, with just a few handsets circulating among members in good standing, the night rescue calls were made by phone.

When Gerald Reed started working at the fire station, he’d put it out by radio in the daytime, and he, or whoever spent the night there, phoned it out at night.

For fires we had a ring-down line: One phone call rang 30 phones at once in a distinctive pattern. You’d answer, and hear sleepy voices saying “Hello?” while Louise repeated over and over, “False alarm. False alarm. False alarm.” In theory, this was to get a fire crew out; in fact, it could be activated by anyone who either had the secret number or found it by accident.

Once it started, it wouldn’t stop until every phone had been picked up. It cost about $40 to set up, and people would move out of town and their phone numbers reassigned in the years between times Brother would spring for the change.

Times were different. Contrary to what you may think we “old-timers” believe, they were not always better. Some things were: Citizens thought we could walk on water, and gave us unqualified support, and nobody thought about lawsuits. It was a time when no one had heard the term “HIV-positive.”

Heck, we used to meet back at the station after a bad call, our hands covered with dried blood. It was a macho emblem, like a mechanic with grease on his hands.

You guys are doing a good job, and we’re very comfortable placing our legacy in your hands. The level of education and technology that you work with was inconceivable in our day. And I know it’s hard for you to imagine this, but 25 years from now, some of you will be the “old-timers” telling rookies how primitive the service was at the turn of this century.

Thank you for doing what you do, and God bless you all.

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