What An Example: Emergency Squad Has Served Cooperstown For 40 Years

Jim Kevlin/The Freeman’s Journal
The 40th anniversary banquet of the Emergency Squad of the Cooperstown Fire Department   included, seated, from left, life members Joe Carentz (the squad’s last surviving charter member), Brian Clancy, Carol Affourtit and Mike Welch; standing, from left, are Mayor Joe Booan, the current squad captain, Eric Pierce, past captains Bev Hargrove, Bob Satriano, Bonnie Kaido, Bruce Maxson and Fred Lemister, Fire Chief Paul Bedworth and Police Chief Diana Nicols.  Carentz and Affourtit have also served as captains. 

 It’s a story that merits retelling – often – and Fred Lemister, one of the longest-serving members of the Emergency Squad of the Cooperstown Fire Department, did so at the squad’s 40th anniversary celebration Saturday evening, Jan. 22, at St. Mary’s “Our Lady of the Lake” church hall.
Within five days of each other in 1992, two men died:  Andy Gracey of Toddsville and Cooperstown Mayor Jim Woolson.
And yet, Gracey lived another 11 years.  Woolson, fiery as ever, stopped by The Freeman’s Journal office the other day to weigh in on one of the issues of the day.
Both men died.  But they lived, thanks to skills volunteer squad members had developed in the years since July 20, 1970, when – with a Cadillac ambulance provided by Jane Forbes Clark – the first 10 members, under the direction of Gordon Fowler, reported for duty.
On May 21, 1992, the squad arrived at Gracey’s Toddsville home.  The man, 71, was indeed dead.  But two jolts of the defibrillator and his heart began to beat again.  He was brought back to life.
On May 26, 1992, Mayor Woolson collapsed leaving village hall.  Again, he was dead when the squad arrived.  But a single jolt of the defibrillator revived him.
At Gracey’s funeral in 2003 – he lived to age 82 – family members came up to Lemister and said, “Thank you for giving us our father for another 11 years.”
Said Fred, “That’s why we do what we do.”

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Stu Taugher, that lion of village life who passed away last February, was fire company president when Bassett Hospital, which had provided ambulance service for decades, approached the firefighters to take it over.
“It’s our village and it’s our responsibility,” Taugher remembered thinking when, well over 80, he retired from the Village Board a couple of years before he died.
When it was discussed, nine members – Joe Carentz, the last survivor of those brave few, was one of them – raised their hands in favor of adopting the service.  The next meeting, they discovered they’d been drafted as the fledgling squad’s first members.
Fred Lemister, a firefighter, was a skeptic.  A volunteer ambulance squad was an untried idea.  He didn’t believe it could be done.  Soon, however, he was sold.
“I’ve never been so happy to be so wrong,” he said the other night.
It’s hard to believe that the service has been provided, free of charge, for all these years, although it seems a move is in the offing to replace the mutual assistance agreements between Cooperstown and its neighbors with Cooperstown Medical Transport’s paid service.
What we don’t appreciate, we lose.

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A village, like any group of people, goes through periods of rough and smooth. 
While the last couple of years have been rough one for community amity in Cooperstown, all of the recent warring parties were represented at that dinner, sitting across from each other, breaking bread, sipping glasses of punch.
As we enter another political season – both parties nominated full slates Tuesday night, Jan. 25, for the March 15 village elections – let’s remember the example of the Emergency Squad of the Cooperstown Fire Department.
Sure, there have been tiffs, but the idea of service to community has allowed the squad to survive, even thrive, for decades.  Service is was it’s all about.
Ladies and gentlemen of the squad, well done.