EMS MUSEUM - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Member of the National EMS Museum Executives Team
• Immediate past - President

Job Titles:

• Member of the National EMS Museum Executives Team
• Treasurer

Job Titles:

• Member of the National EMS Museum Executives Team
• Secretary

Danny Nelson, EMT-P was the lead flight paramedic aboard the craft and had been joined by pilot Harold Browning and a second flight paramedic Eddie Sands, EMT-P for the mission. Upon impact, both Danny Nelson and Harold Browning were instantly killed. Flight paramedic Eddie Sands sustained injuries, but later recovered. The patient also survived the crash, only to expire several days later from complications pertaining to the original 70% burns that he had sustained from the earlier accident. Danny Nelson had dedicated his life to EMS and had seen its evolvement in Cobb County, Georgia from the days when funeral homes still operated ambulances. He began as a basic emergency medical technician and soon rose to become a paramedic and later completed specialized training in both critical care patient transportation and MediVac flight operations while at Metro Ambulance Service. Danny Nelson will be long remembered as a true pioneer in the arena of helicopter patient transportation and a true inspiration to both the field of EMS and the paramedic profession.

Job Titles:

• Member of the National EMS Museum Executives Team
• President

Bernard Lown was born on June 7, 1921 in Utena, Lithuania. He immigrated to the United States as a boy, and said that had he "remained in Europe for two more years [he] would not have survived." After moving to Lewiston, Maine in 1935 he eventually attended the University of Maine where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in zoology. He then attended Johns Hopkins University, where he became known for being an advocate for racial justice; he was suspended multiple times for going against the segregationist policies at JHU (Lown Institute). Lown is best known for being the original developer of the direct current defibrillator, also known as the cardioverter, in 1962, and he also introduced Lidocaine as a means to control heartbeat disturbances. Truly an EMS innovator, Lown focused on sudden cardiac death and psychological stress on the cardiovascular system. His work contributed to the development of the coronary care unit, and by refusing to patent the direct current defibrillator, Lown's defibrillator could be more easily accessible therefore saving thousands of lives across the world. Lown's contributions to the field of cardiology are invaluable and include the encouragement of movement over complete bed-rest post-myocardial infarction, the introduction of the precordial thump used to reverse ventricular tachycardia, and establishing one of the first Coronary Care Units (at Peter Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts). This CCU became a model that other hospitals would adapt. Equally as important as his contributions to the field of cardiology, is his activism and philanthropy. Lown founded the Lown Cardiovascular Research Foundation in order to promote worldwide cardiovascular health. Additionally, as one of the founders of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Lown accepted the Nobel Peace Prize with co-founder Dr. Evgeny Chazov in 1985 on behalf of the organization for its work in mobilizing over 100,000 physicians to support nuclear disarmament. Then in 1987, Lown founded SatelLife, which allowed health care professionals in developing countries to access medical literature they would not have been able to otherwise. Lown was also a prolific author and his 1996 book, The Lost Art of Healing was among his most well-known works. He also published a memoir about his work towards nuclear disarmament, Prescription for Survival, in 2008. These contributions seem to barely begin to scratch the surface of Lown's contributions to the field in both innovation, research, awards won, organizations founded, and people helped. Lown lived a full life and helped countless people around the world; he passed away at age 99 on February 16, 2021.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Carl B. Young and Eleanor Hamilton Young of Houston, Texas and his brother, Will H. Young of Graham, Texas and sisters Eleanor A. Young of San Antonio Texas, Elizabeth Womack of Colorado, and Mary Louise Schmitt of Houston, Texas. Carl is survived by his wife: Dolores G. Young of Corpus Christi, Texas; three sons, Carl Young III Frances and William T. Young Suzanne both of San Antonio, Texas and James A. Young of Corpus Christi, Texas; three grandchildren, Tiffany, Carl and Amber; two great grandchildren, Olivia and Leila; two brothers, Robert L. Young and John B. Young both of Houston, Texas.

Dr. Boyd started as a junior surgical resident at Cook County Hospital in Chicago at a time when there was no standardized way of evaluating incoming trauma patients. In Korea, the U.S. Army Medical Corps transported the wounded, often by helicopter, to nearby Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals. As a result, the mortality rate for wounded soldiers in Korea was half what it had been in World War II. But the number of Americans who were dying each year on the nation's streets and highways roughly equaled the number that eventually died in Vietnam. Boyd and his colleagues replicated the treatment of gunshot and vehicle accident victims based on the M.A.S.H. concept in the Chicago Area. Boyd was soon appointed the EMS Director for Illinois. From 1970 to 1974 he developed the Illinois trauma network through a combination of hospital and ambulance communication systems, trauma center performance assessment tools, new advanced equipped and staffed ambulances, and helicopters to transport critical patients from rural medical facilities to trauma centers in larger urban areas. By 1974, Dr. Boyd's trauma system had become fully operational. Based on that success, he was appointed by the President of the United States to serve as Chief of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Division. He applied the success from Illinois with a vision of building "wall-to-wall" EMS systems throughout the country. He travelled extensively and personally met with local EMS leaders. His program built upon the successes of the previous Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grants for regional communications systems. He remained in this position until 1981 when a new President and administration abolished his office and changed to medical "block grant" funding which gave the local jurisdictions decision power over what health development projects that such monies would be spent on. Boyd continued to serve EMS as a well respected Washington-based consultant on health care systems.

Upon her graduation from Cornell University School of Medicine in 1897, Emily Dunning faced the traditional "male only" barrier of the medical profession. Though women had gained admission to medical colleges, none were allowed appointments to a hospital house staff. Encouraged by mentor Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi to take the competitive internship exams, Dr. Dunning lobbied the Medical Board and Trustees of Mount Sinai Hospital, which granted permission to sit for the examination with the understanding she would not be admitted no matter her standing. Dr. Dunning scored first place, and applied to several of the city hospitals with quarters capable of housing a woman. All refused her admission. In 1902 Dr. Dunning became the first woman admitted to an internship program in New York, at Gouverneur Hospital on Manhattan's Lower East Side. In 1903 she became the first woman Ambulance Surgeon. The story of Dr Dunning's early life is the subject of an autobiography: "Bowery to Bellevue; the Story of New York's First Woman Ambulance Surgeon"; a book by Iris Noble: "First Woman Ambulance Surgeon"; and the 1952 film "The Girl in White" starring June Allyson.

Job Titles:

• Doctor

At a 1964 meeting of the International Rescue and First Aid Association, Dr. Eugene Nagel met some rescue officers who told him that despite their good CPR, all their patients kept dying. Mobile intensive coronary care units combining CPR, resuscitative drugs and early defibrillation were being tried in a few American cities, but the systems were requiring that doctors be aboard the vehicles. Nagel thought a disease-specific vehicle carrying a physician was not reasonable and wanted to find a more practical way to bring these lifesaving treatments to the field. He proposed to Miami-Dade fire officials to link a mobile intensive care vehicle to hospital-based medical command and control with radio voice telemetry. A telemetry package was put together in a milk crate, and a defibrillator was ordered from a little-known Seattle company called Physio-Control. The first LifePak 33 shook apart within two weeks of service. It was returned to the company to be redesigned. Fire-rescue personnel were taught to defibrillate, start IVs, administer drugs and intubate without guidelines, textbooks or legislation. Through this work, Nagel helped form the Medical Committee of the International Association of Fire Chiefs in the late 1960s. He later served on one the first federal HEW review committees that gave grants to communities for EMS systems. He saw the global importance of EMS as well and lobbied successfully in Washington in 1973 to overturn President Richard Nixon's veto of the EMS Systems Act. His later posts included Harbor General Hospital (UCLA) in 1974 and Johns Hopkins in 1976, where he was a fire surgeon with Baltimore County Fire Department. Nagel was a frequent contributor to EMS Magazine during the 1970s and early 1980s and served on the editorial advisory board for many years. Doctor Eugene Nagel's papers reside at the Wood Library and Museum of Anesthesia: https://www.woodlibrarymuseum.org/archives/finding.php?id=422

J. Michael Criley, MD founded the Los Angeles County Paramedic Program in 1969. He served as Chief of the Division of Cardiology at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center for 20 years and as a full time faculty at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center for 42 years. He was honored with the title of emeritus professor of Medicine and Radiological Sciences at the UCLA School of Medicine.

Job Titles:

• National EMS Museum Director

Job Titles:

• Member of the National EMS Museum Executives Team
• Vice President

Job Titles:

• National EMS Museum Director

Job Titles:

• Officer

Glenn "Bud" Hare, the former police officer and entrepreneur who invented a revolutionary leg splint and numerous other devices, started the country's largest emergency medical products company, distributed a massive catalog to help support the enterprise, and later launched POLICE magazine in the 1970s, died recently of complications following a heart attack. He was 68. As a young San Diego police officer in the '60s, Mr. Hare shared ambulance-driving duties with fellow officers when a new medical response division in the department was created. Bothered by the suffering endured by some patients due to the lack of sophisticated equipment, he set out to create a leg splint designed to quickly immobilize the extremity while placing it in traction at the same time. Eventually calling it the "Hare Traction Splint," the device became an industry standard and since 1968, has been used in 100 countries. He also invented such items as a blue square flare, a fog-detection device and was ahead of his time in designing a police pistol that if stripped from an officer by an assailant, could not be fired. Mr. Hare's company - founded in 1967 - was started after his nearly 6-year tenure with the San Diego P.D. The firm was initially called Dyna but for the next 32 years, its name evolved nearly as aggressively as the company, eventually coming full circle to Dyna Corporation and employing 225 people. Over the years, the company produced a 300-page catalog of more than 3,500 emergency medical services products, published dozens of magazines including EMERGENCY and POLICE, and ran a printing division for its publications. Mr. Hare took an active interest in both magazines and was pictured on POLICE‘s June 1991 cover with then President George Bush. Mr. Hare had been "invited to the White House to discuss the Crime Bill and the aftermath of the Rodney King incident," his wife Florence told POLICE. EMERGENCY magazine was the first of the two titles started by Mr. Hare, with its inaugural edition rolling off the presses in 1969. It was followed 9 years later by POLICE. Both publications were sold to Bobit Publishing in December 1996 but EMERGENCY was closed in the summer of 1998. POLICE has maintained continuous monthly publication since 1978. Mr. Hare is survived by his wife, Florence; a daughter, Leslie Leupold, of Vista, Calif.; a son, Dan, of Encinitas, Calif.; a brother, Bill, of Vista; and three grandchildren.

Gordon K. Allen is long remembered as a legend in the history of ambulance vehicle sales and conversions in the southwest, especially in Texas. In the 1950s, Gordon K. Allen established the southwest distributorship for Superior Coaches of Lima, Ohio within the Dallas city limits. This included a complete line of Superior Coach limousines, flower cars, straight hearses, and those that were designed to be quickly converted into an ambulance by removing the scrolled side "Landau" glass panel covers, attaching a removable Federal Model 17 red "Beacon Ray", and flipping over the casket roller covers. The hearse-ambulance conversions had a permanently installed side stretcher securing bar, a mechanical Federal or Sireno siren, or new 75 watt electronic siren speaker(s) under the hood, and, sometimes, an oxygen mount in which a portable oxygen tank with regulator and mask could be quickly inserted. There was also a small floor, or forward bulkhead compartment to store a first aid kit. The legendary Dallas funeral homes, which provided ambulance service at the time, included the Camp Funeral Home, the Ed C. Smith Funeral Home, the Al Cortez Funeral Home, the Dudley Hughes Funeral Home, the O'Neil Funeral Home, and the Sparkman Funeral Home. Gordon K. Allen Superior Corporation Coaches also offered a line of "straight" line Superior Body chassis ambulances. For example, in 1957, a Dallas commercial company called the Ambulance Service Company of Dallas, purchased three 1957 Superior ambulance vehicles which were built on the Cadillac chassis.

Job Titles:

• Chief
• Founder of Model Paramedic Programs

Chief Gordon Vickery began his career as a firefighter and rose to the rank of Fire Chief in Seattle, which he held from 1963 until he retired in 1972. He created the Medic One (1968) and Medic Two programs with cardiologist, Dr. Leonard Cobb. With these programs, he is credited as building the Seattle Fire Department into one that was held as an example that many other departments nationwide modeled themselves after. This includes the minority-training program, community-safety programs, arson task force, as well as the Medic One program. Medic One and Medic Two were intended to bring pre-hospital coronary and trauma care to the site of the emergency, and when the Seattle City Council declined to fund the program, firefighters solicited donations and kept the program going. The success of these programs were among the reasons that Vickery went to Washington in 1979 and served as interim head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and then director of FEMA's United States Fire Administration under President Carter. Vickery, through his work with the Fire Administration, helped promote fire-prevention education, and introduced a national system for reporting fires.

Job Titles:

• Immediate past - Secretary & WE ARE EMS Coordinator

Job Titles:

• Museum Director

Job Titles:

• National EMS Museum Director

Doctor James Pantridge was born in Hillsborough, County Down, Ireland, on October 3, 1916. His forebears were small landowners. He attended the Friends School, then Queen's University. He graduated with a degree in medicine from Queen's University in 1939. Dr. Pantridge became a Medical Officer with an infantry battalion after joining the army at the outbreak of the Second World War, and received an immediate award of the Military Cross for his work during the Battle of Singapore. He was captured when the city fell to the Japanese and spent much of his captivity on the Siam-Burma railway, including some months in the notorious "death camp", Tanbaya,- an experience, which was to haunt him for the rest of his life. His interest in cardiology may have been initiated during this time when he survived the usually fatal cardiac beri-beri. Dr. Pantridge returned to Belfast in 1945, but could obtain only an appointment as an adjunct lecturer in the Queen's University Department of Pathology. He then obtained a scholarship to the University of Michigan where he worked with F. N. Wilson, the world authority on electrocardiology of the time. He returned to Belfast in 1950 and was appointed Physician at the Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH), where he remained until his retired in 1982, quickly establishing an internationally renowned cardiology unit. He received the Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) appointment in 1978.

Job Titles:

• National EMS Museum Director

Job Titles:

• Bookkeeper - Accountant