An upcoming event will recognize and honor all past and present

EMS (Emergency Medical Services) volunteers who served or

currently serve with the Chinook ambulance crew. According

to Colleen Overcast, one of the event organizers, "It will be an

opportunity for us to publicly recognize the many volunteers who

served with the ambulance crew. Over the years we never properly

thanked the crew members who put in so many hours of their own

time to help our community." Two plaques will be displayed at

the event showing the 100+ names of volunteers who served from

1948, when the service began in Chinook, to the present.

Overcast, a longtime crew member and one of the lead

instructors who trained many of the EMTs who served on the crew,

said, "What started the idea for this event was some planning we

were doing to honor Gary Anderson, a three-decade plus volunteer

with the Chinook ambulance crew. He moved away recently and

we didn't really get a chance to recognize his service." "Then,"

Overcast added, "we decided it would be a good time to recognize

all the past volunteers."

Organizers wanted to create permanent plaques that list all the

volunteers "from the beginning of the Chinook ambulance service

to the present." The plaques will be shown at the June event, then

permanently displayed in the room where the ambulance crew

meets in the Annex behind the courthouse. The plan is to begin a

second plaque that will list volunteers who serve during and after

2018.

A big challenge was finding the names of past volunteers.

Overcast recalled, "I figured it would be easy to find all the names

of the volunteers from past years." Turns out it was a bit of a

complicated job to find all the names since no central record of

volunteers was ever kept.

To find those names organizers called on Laurie Huestis, a

member of the ambulance crew since 1984 and currently a co-crew

chief. Huestis said, "First I went through all the records of training

the ambulance service kept. One problem was that volunteers did

not have to receive initial training from 1948 to 1974 so there were

no training records. Orientation back then was a "throw and go"

system, volunteers were thrown into the crew and started going

on calls." She also looked through ambulance crew meeting

minutes, early county commissioner records when names of EMS

volunteers went before the commissioners for approval and other

records she could lay hands on.

"Once I exhausted the written records," Huestis added, "I talked with Freda Bryson and Mary Pyette to find and verify more names. Freda helped organize many of the early classes to certify EMTs and Mary served on the ambulance crew and because of her former position as county nurse also knew a lot of people who volunteered for the ambulance over the years."

Huestis came up with more than 100 names of people who had served as volunteers. Overcast said, "I didn't think there would be that many names but as I went through the list I kept thinking, "Oh yes, I remember them, I recall when they served and I had forgotten they were on the crew." It was really incredible how many people served on the ambulance crew over the years."

Gary Anderson will be back in Chinook for the June 9 celebration. Overcast said, "We planned to present a plaque to Gary around the time he moved to Missoula, then winter came and changed our plans. We'll honor Gary on that night for his 30+ years of service on the ambulance crew." Anderson was a crew member, then a lead instructor training new EMTs. He successfully wrote many grants that provided new equipment and training opportunities for the Chinook crew. Anderson was also active in the Chinook Volunteer Fire Department and in 2017 was given reserve fire fighter status after serving 14 years with the department.

The recognition event will begin at 5pm at Sweet Memorial Park (next to the city pool in Chinook) on Saturday, June 9. Guests are asked to bring a covered dish, grilled burgers and dogs will be provided. All former and current Chinook ambulance crews and their families are invited to this celebration. The event honors the folks who gave so much of their personal time to train for certification, attended numerous training sessions to maintain their certification and made ambulance runs, at all hours and in all conditions, to render aid to the residents in their community.

The "Journal" salutes these former and current dedicated EMS volunteers.