Sunday, June 7, 1998
FORT WRIGHT -- Mike Marino once witnessed a motorcycle accident not 100 feet in front of him. The guy's hand was hanging by a thread. He'd lost some fingers. His girlfriend's neck was broken.
Mr. Marino did what he could.
Then there was the time a taxi hit a mail truck near his place in New York. He ran outside. About 10 people were scattered around. Mr. Marino did what he could.
Three years ago, he and his family moved to Northern Kentucky. They hadn't been here long when the carbon-monoxide detector went off.
A bunch of volunteers did what they could.
"I called, and all these guys came running in," says Mr. Marino, his voice rising with excitement. "They dropped whatever they were doing to help somebody they didn't know.
"I thought, "This is cool.' "
Now he's doing it, too, as a member of Fort Wright's volunteer rescue squad. Once possessing a knack for just coming across accidents, Mr. Marino now has a beeper that summons him to the scene.
He's stumbled onto a peculiar situation here in Northern Kentucky. Industry is booming, suburbs are expanding, tax revenues are on the rise -- and our fire-and-rescue services are still largely dependent on neighborly goodwill.
Mr. Marino works as a graphic designer for Gibson Greetings during the day. Other volunteers are machinists, jail deputies, software designers, construction workers. By night, they're on call in case somebody has a heart attack or a house catches fire.
Two-thirds of the state's 62 volunteer ambulance services are in Northern Kentucky, says Bob Calhoun of the state's Public Protection Department. There are 270 services in the state; the others are run by private companies or governments with paid employees.
Northern Kentucky also has a large number of volunteer fire departments. In the bigger cities, these volunteers are supplemented with paid firefighters. Covington's department is entirely paid.
Some say we're outgrowing the tradition.
People have far more distractions today than they did 30 years ago, when volunteer firefighting was an activity of sorts, like Knothole baseball or the Boy Scouts. And today there are many more rules, restrictions and training requirements to follow. Emergency medical technicians, for instance, must go to class two nights a week for six months before they're ready to roll.
The situation can be especially trying in small communities. By law, two EMTs must be dispatched on each call; and during the day, it can be tough to find any.
In Ludlow last year, only one volunteer was available to handle a heart-attack emergency. By the time a second person from nearby Bromley was summoned, at least 10 minutes had passed. The victim ended up in serious condition, and family members were upset.
For this reason, larger cities like Edgewood and Fort Mitchell have a few paid firefighters who are also EMTs on duty during the day.
Years ago, even teen-agers helped out.
Janet Rogers of Ryland Heights remembers her son, B.J., joining the community's junior firefighting squad in the 1970s. B.J. helped fight fires even though he wasn't old enough to drive; his dad would take him to each disaster.
Joe Messmer, Edgewood's volunteer fire chief, used to do the same. His dad had been a chief, too, and sometimes he'd catch his son fighting blazes. "You know you're not supposed to be in there," he'd growl.
"I know," the young Joe would reply, with every intention of doing it again at the earliest opportunity.
Years later, Mr. Messmer finds himself designing fancy posters and brochures to ferret out new volunteers.
Here's the encouraging part: It works. This year, in response to an aggressive campaign, 30 people agreed to get training in Edgewood.
"Volunteerism in this area has been rich for years," says Paul LaFontaine, chief of Elsmere's department. "It's been there. It's kind of like the way it's always been done."
In the 1950s, Ami Groger's parents, Bob and Mary Wiechman, drove around rescuing people in their own station wagon before the town of Fort Wright had an ambulance. Now Ami carries on their legacy of service, volunteering as an EMT.
Doug Lankheit, who works at the Kenton County Jail, caught the bug as a boy living down the street from the firehouse. "It made me grow up a lot," he says of his firefighting. "A lot of people don't even realize the stress, the quick thinking you have to do in an emergency situation."
After a year on the rescue squad, Mr. Marino is full of stories. His squad once used a defibrillator to save a woman in cardiac arrest. Another time, the members convinced a guy who'd fainted to go to the hospital, where he had a heart attack but survived.
Living in New York "kind of sucks the humanity out of you," says Mr. Marino, who's still haunted by the 1964 case of Kitty Genovese, stabbed to death while her neighbors watched from their windows in Queens.
This place is different, he says.
"I love Kentucky. The people here are amazing. There's a decency, a humanity, that I didn't see in New York.
"It's real hokey stuff," he says, sheepishly.
Yeah, maybe . . . but keep going. We need to hear it.
Karen Samples is The Enquirer's Kentucky columnist. Her column appears on Sundays and Thursdays in The Kentucky Enquirer. She can be reached at 578-5584 or email
her at ksamples@enquirer.com
SAMPLES ARCHIVE