MARROWSTONE ISLAND — The stories, written or spoken, say it all.
“Fell from ladder. Quick response. Airlifted to Harborview. Here today.”
“I went into total cardiac arrest. If I had not had quick service, I would not be here. I owe my life to this organization.”
Fires, falls, burns, breaks SEmD over the past three decades, volunteer emergency medical technicians on Marrowstone Island have responded to it all.
On Saturday, island residents gathered to thank three volunteers who are retiring as well as remember all those who provided their neighbors with a helping hand SEmD in a hurry.
“We had a response time of six to eight minutes from the time we toned out ’til we were on scene,” Laurie Tillman said.
Three honored
Tillman served as volunteer coordinator for the Marrowstone Emergency Medical Service, also known as MEMS, and she was one of the organizers of the potluck dinner, held at Fort Flagler State Park dining hall, to honor Paula Lalish, Ray Harker and Mary Tennbrink.
The three island residents, retiring after more than 10 years each, were presented with certificates of appreciation from Hank Hazen, the master of ceremonies.
Hazen also presented plaques to Jeanne Clendenon and Lisa Painter, the two “crazy women” who started MEMS, a community-owned ambulance service on Marrowstone in 1978.
“They said it couldn’t be done,” Painter said. “The very next morning, Jeanne was on the phone to Olympia to find out how to get an ambulance on the island.”
The service operated until 2000, when the Chimacum Fire District merged with Marrowstone.
At the dinner, Clendenon related what is now island legend SEmD how she begged $100 each from six residents to buy an old ambulance she saw sitting in a field in Chimacum.
Inmates at the men’s prison at Shelton fixed it up, she recalled, and were rewarded with home-baked cookies from island residents.
The ambulance was parked in the pasture in back of the house, Clendenon said.
They didn’t have two-way radios, she said SEmD when people had an emergency, they phoned the house and she or Painter called Gene Messick or Elva Kepke, the first volunteer EMTs.
“You had to ask permission to go to town,” Clendenon recalled. “We had to have an EMT on the island at all times.”
To show the history, Tillman created a slide show and a timeline on which people wrote down how they were involved, either providing service, receiving it or both.
The ambulance’s first call was from one of the six original donors, according to Tillman’s history.
During the next two decades, island residents raised money to cover operating expenses through bake sales, pancake breakfasts and sales of potatoes and Walla Walla onions, Tillman said.
The latter was a project that Ruth Russell started and Linda Gateley continued, Gateley said.
Artist Marge Illman designed Marrowstone Island cards and a logo for Marrowstone Island sweatshirts, which Martha and Bob Van Etten sold out of their home.
Donors’ security blanket
For the couple, the service was a good security blanket, Bob said.
“We used the ambulance four times between us,” he told the audience. “It was nice to see people you know when they came to your house.”
Harker said in his decade of service, the EMTs averaged a call a week, ranging from helping people who had fallen to helping to airlift them to Harborview.
The calls increased in summer, he said, when visitors to Fort Flagler State Park would fall off bunkers, into campfires or off bicycles.
Chief Gordon Pomeroy of the East Jefferson Fire-Rescue attended the dinner to thank the volunteers past and present, as did Mark Loose, commanding officer of Naval Magazine Indian Island.
Loose also commended the retirees’ replacements, Pat McNerthney and Mike Coffeen, who are currently taking EMT training.
Loose reminded residents that until the men complete the course and the ambulance is back at the Marrowstone fire station, he has two sets of four-man crews on duty 24/7.
Also speaking at Saturday’s dinner were Pat Bondurant, longtime Chimacum Fire District commissioner, and Chuck Boggs, assistant East Jefferson fire chief, who is retiring at the end of March after 39 years of service.
Organizing the dinner with Laurie Tillman were Sandy Barrett, Heather Tillman, Hazen and Pete Hubbard, who started Islandnet, a local online group.
Before the ambulance
In relating the history of MEMS, Laurie Tillman reminded the audience what it was like before Clendenon bought the ambulance.
Returning home late at night, an island resident had fallen off a 10-foot bank, Tillman said.
Realizing the resident was seriously injured, a friend who was with him held his head for two hours until an ambulance arrived from elsewhere, Tillman said.
“Luckily he had no permanent impairment,” Tillman said.
A Marrowstone man who fell off a ladder and landed on concrete would not have been so lucky.
According to a note from Harborview medical staff, the man would have been a paraplegic if EMTs had not arrived and prevented him from moving.
Yvonne Otterness both wrote a thank-you and spoke to thank the EMTs for being there for her mother and Cy Didjurgis, a friend she took care of in the last years of his life.
Both are gone, Otterness said, but she wanted the EMTs to know how much Didjurgis loved them, and that she will never forget the time her mother had a heart scare and 10 EMTs showed up.
“What an island,” Otterness said. “Mom and her family are forever grateful.”
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Port Townsend/Jefferson County reporter-columnist Jennifer Jackson can be reached at jjackson@olypen.com.
