TIMES RECORD [Spencer, WV] - At scene (shown above) of Tuesdays motorcycle wreck is Bob Weaver of Sinnett-Weaver Funeral Home ambulance service, shown administering first aid to injured leg of motorcycle driver David DeBoard who received multiple compound fractures to lower left leg, later transferred to St. Joseph Hospital by the ambulance service
Times Record 1973 - Keys to new Rescue Unit presented here to Bob Weaver, Chief of the Rescue Squad of the Spencer-Roane VFD, looking on is Kermit McKown, president of Roane County Court and Fire Chief Jack Wine
By Bob Weaver 2022
It seems like a stretch, but rural undertakers spent more time tending to the sick and injured than burying people, rural funeral homes providing ambulance service during much of 20th Century.
They already had vehicles to transport reclining human beings, and charged a few bucks for the service.
Delivering services as a mortician in the 1960s and early 1970s, my Spencer WV funeral home responded to 1,200 ambulance calls annually, before such services were replaced by Emergency Medical Services.
It was a time for the rebirth of CPR, discovering it really did work.
See AMBLER RIDGE MAYHEM RECALLED - "Dust On My Saddle, Mud On My Boots"
And
SUNNY CAL JOURNAL - Don't Know Nothin''Bout Birthin' Babies!"
Also SUNNY CAL JOURNAL - Rigor Mortis Done Set In, Drunk, Dead And Delivered
Another Faces Of Poverty, Maggots To Copperheads
And Another A TRUE STORY: TRAGIC ALCOHOLIC LIFE ENDS WITH MURDER AND SUICIDE
During a decade of gross poverty, I answered calls in every nook and cranny of Roane and Calhoun County, and carried the mission a step further by helping create a Rescue Service for the Spencer-Roane Volunteer Fire Department.
In the early 1960s we utilized a converted milk truck, then in the 1970s, we helped advancing the technology with a "modern" rescue unit with all the paraphernalia.
It seems easy to be blind-slighted about poverty, but I found it difficult to ignore, staring in the face, year after year.
During those years, I tried to step up to the plate, studying first aid, carrying my trusty first aid kit, learning how to deliver babies and taking some of the first EMT courses and providing CPR.
Over the years I have written about some of the incidents, and as now an aged man am grateful for having had the life-changing experience, my view of human beings looking differently at their circumstances, with a degree of humble understanding.
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