NORDLAND — After the retirement this year of Marrowstone Island’s last three volunteer emergency medical technicians, Lisa Painter recalled a time before the island had trained emergency medical responders.
That all changed in 1978 when her friend, Jeanne Clendenon, refused to take no for an answer and established one of the first community-owned ambulance services in the state.
“I was just going along for the ride,” Painter said, crediting Clendenon as the driving force behind establishing ambulance service on the island.
Things have changed since 2000, when then-Fire District 1, based in Chimacum, absorbed the Marrowstone emergency services because soaring insurance rates made the service too costly for the island’s residents.
Out of the Marrowstone-Chimacum merger, Painter said, came the Marrowstone Island Foundation, which has raised some $100,000 for scholarships that go first to those seeking training in emergency services.
Ambulance will return
The ambulance was moved from Marrowstone to the Chimacum station, but will return when two new volunteer emergency medical technicians are trained and based on the island, cutting response time by more than half.
The final three EMTs to retire, effective Jan. 1 were Ray Harker and his wife, Mary TennBrink, and Paula Lalish.
“It’s really not a game for 60-year-old volunteers,” said Lalish, who served 12 years as an EMT, starting in 1998, adding it was like “guerrilla first aid” when she first volunteered.
Her husband, Greg Lalish, remains as a volunteer firefighter after 20 years of service, some as an EMT.
Painter remembers a committee meeting in which the chairman said Marrowstone Island ambulance service couldn’t be done.
“I heard Jeannie in my left ear say, ‘You wanna bet?'” said Painter, now 83, remembering the early years of ambulance service Thursday as she stood in front of the former ambulance station on Fort Flagler Road.
“Within six months of ‘it couldn’t be done,’ she had a team trained and an ambulance,” Painter said, speaking for Clendenon who was too ill to be interviewed for this story.
“She went to various friends and asked them for $100 each to get the ambulance service started.”
Fundraising
That was followed by garage sales, bake sales, fund-raising picnics and T-shirt sales.
“Lots of T-shirts and hats were sold, and the community was just marvelous,” Painter said. “It was a really exciting time.”
The first call came as Clendenon and Painter were in their kitchen with state inspectors signing the paperwork certifying the ambulance service.
“It was a man at [Fort Flagler] State Park who had drowned,” Painter said.
Both Painter and Clendenon trained for disaster work and earned their nursing degrees at Olympic Community College in Bremerton.
They moved to Marrowstone Island in 1972 from Berkeley, Calif., where they were employees of the state of California.
No radios
The ambulance service started without two-way radios, so volunteers used their home phones to communicate.
Radios were bought before the Hood Canal Bridge sank in 1979, but electricity was cut, requiring the volunteers to take half their communications equipment at a time to a place where it could be recharged.
The ambulance station, now adjacent to the Marrowstone Fire Station, was built by the Marrowstone Island Community in 1984 through different fundraisers and volunteer labor.
Clendenon hustled to get state certification and even shopped for a used ambulance, driving the second ambulance all the way back to Nordland from Chicago during the winter.
Bob Barrett, who drove the ambulance for 12 years, said when Marrowstone joined Chimacum, “We had a relatively smooth transition with Fire District 1 for those of us who stuck around.
“Our resources increased. We got a broader spectrum of training and we became more rounded.”
The transition did not go well for some volunteers, he admits. About half on Marrowstone quit.
18 EMTs at peak
At its peak, Marrowstone had 18 volunteer EMTs and five emergency services drivers.
Response time was 3 to 4 minutes then, compared to 7 to 9 minutes from Chimacum today.
Barrett said he is confident that new EMTs will be trained again to bring the ambulance back to Marrowstone’s station.
His wife, Sandy, who is organizing a March 6 potluck at Fort Flagler State Park to honor past volunteers, said anyone who wants to volunteer as an EMT on Marrowstone is encouraged to do so.
Laurie Tillman, who was the volunteer staff director for about 15 years beginning in 1983, said the evolution of emergency medical services on the island was a community effort like no other.
“I always felt I got way more out of it than I put into it,” Tillman said, adding she hopes more recruits can help bring back ambulance service based on the island.
“Overall, I think what mean the most to me was showing up for a call and having a patient say, ‘Oh, it’s so nice to see a familiar face,'” Lalish said of her Marrowstone EMT service years.
Sandy Barrett said that, until ambulance service returns to Marrowstone, “We’re going to have to rely on Chimacum, Port Townsend and sometimes [Naval Magazine] Indian Island.
“And hopefully they will train others to work as EMTs here.”
Kay Goodhue, who along with her husband, Bill was approached by Clendenon and Painter to serve as EMTs — and did so from 1983 to 1989 — remembered that time.
“The first day we were on duty, the call came,” Goodhue recalled. “It was a heart attack and it was on our road.
“We were up in the orchard, and we ran on the road and heard a woman yelling ‘Help, help, help,’ and her husband was stretched out in the car.”
He had suffered a heart attack. He died later.
“Baptism by fire,” Goodhue said.
“I loved it. I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up,” she said. “We lost four people on the island during the six years I was on duty.”
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
