90 Years and Counting—Salem Rescue Squad

Submitted by Darlene Gee RN BSN Paramedic

Hello from Salem Rescue Squad. It’s been a while since our last submission to this publication and we’ve been quite busy. In fact, in November our squad celebrated 90 years of volunteer service to our community. There were numerous special guests at our celebratory banquet event including, Congressman Morgan Griffith, Senator David Sutterlein, Jennifer Faulkner representing Congressman Ben Cline, Salem City Mayor and Councilwoman, the Honorable Rene’e F. Turk among other distinguished guests.

During our special celebration a number of declarations of proclamations were presented including one on behalf of Governor Glenn Youngkin. Additionally, Jennifer Faulkner the district representative and scheduler for Congressman Ben Cline’s office read aloud a letter of recognition of our historic milestone. Salem’s Mayor, Rene’e F. Turk presented our squad with a proclamation declaring that henceforth, November 15th shall be designated Salem Rescue Squad Day in our city. There were a number of other special guests whom honored our squad with kind words and expressions of support for our organization.

During our 90th anniversary festivities, our squad also honored two very significant physicians that were instrumental in the development and advances of EMS in the Roanoke Valley, doctors John “Lucky” Garvin and Gary Parrish. These professionals supported our squad and its members by teaching, mentoring and molding our rescue brothers and sisters before and among us and they became and remain part of our rescue family.

Further, we recognized members of our squad whom were also some of the first paramedics in the state of Virginia and included Jay Bain, Rob Logan, Joe Cunningham, Pat Counts and two members that have gone on to their eternal home, C.P. Layman and Dave “Doc” Wiley. Additionally, we welcomed Gene Bourne as a life member, the highest honor that our squad can bestow upon a member. In addition, Mike Moore was recognized and honored as our most senior active life member with more than 41 years of service to our organization and community. Our celebration would not have been complete without recognizing our most vital resource, our current membership.

I’m sure you’re wonder what else we’ve been up to since ringing in the New Year. We continue to train and seek out educational opportunities. We are currently holding an EMT course at our building that started January 17th of this year and will conclude March 30th. The course has a number of highly trained and experienced instructors including Freddie Wilson Jr., Jane Lindsay, Ken Cook and Darlene Gee of which the two latter are education coordinator candidates.

February saw our squad hosting its first annual heart health day on Saturday, February 25th at Salem’s Senior Citizen Center. Vickie Sword, Salem Parks and Recreation program supervisor, was so kind as to freely offer us the use of the Senior Citizen Center to hold our special event. We had a number of organizations that freely volunteered their time to assisting us in our event including, the American Heart Association, Lewis Gale Medical Center, Carilion Community Health, Carilion Occupational Medicine and Community Outreach, Roanoke City Health Department, New Horizons Healthcare, Food Lion, Salem YMCA and Planet Fitness. Salem Chick-fil-A also donated to our event. We are grateful for all that contributed to our Heart Health Day.

We continue to recruit new volunteers for our organization. We experienced a bit of a slump in our membership with only 14 members in mid to late 2022 and we have grown to 28 members and we have more events planned throughout 2023 including recruitment activities. We wish you all well and look forward to sharing more in the next issue of VIRGINIA LIFELINE.