Englewood's First Ambulance

Editor’s note: This article was written for the 1993 November/December Images magazine. All information was accurate at that time.

911 emergency service did not exist in the Englewood of the late 1960s. A forty minute drive brought the nearest ambulance from Venice, too far for emergency relief. Persons with station wagons who happened to be near an emergency often became a Good Samaritan. Ironing boards served as a stretcher. Sandbags immobilized an injured neck or limb.

This predicament was the downside of Englewood’s blissful coastal lifestyle as the town prepared to enter the 1970s. The population was growing, causing more emergencies to arise. Foresighted men recognized that things could not continue as they had. With their nucleus in the Englewood Volunteer Fire Department, a group lead by Reverend Arlo Leinback, Bob Scott, and Wendell Hicks, began planning to purchase an ambulance for Englewood.

It was their experience with the dying man on the floor of the Pantry Pride Grocery Store that led Bonnie and Clyde Jennings to join the group.

It took a year’s worth of planning and fund-raising. The group solicited donations of cash and materials from the community. In 1970, the dream became reality when they purchased two Ford vans, a half-ton and a three-quarter ton, for $6,600. The volunteers stripped the vehicles, built cabinets inside and supplied them with $14,000 worth of surplus government equipment purchased in Stark.

A third ambulance was acquired when Ross Funeral Home in Venice donated a hearse to the group.

“We carried our water in milk cartons,” recalls Jennings, “and we used pillow cases for rags. That’s what we ran with hoping that eventually the young people would get the schooling they needed. They did, and now they’re running the ambulance. That was our main goal.”

All the participants in the ambulance service traveled to the Venice hospital to receive Emergency Medical Training and CPR. The training sessions continued in the group’s weekly meetings. There they learned a variety of techniques such as the proper manor to remove an auto accident victim from the vehicle.

In several cases, others besides the townspeople became involved with the fledgling service. “Many people who came down here to visit in those days were kind enough to assist us,” Jennings says, “because it was our people who gave them the chance to enjoy their vacations. And may of these strangers would help us on a run and some of them had training that they passed on to us.”

Sometime in 1970 the group became operational, and ironically, the first call the handled was for Reverend Leinback’s wife.

When they were on duty, Bonnie and Clyde kept an ambulance at their house on Oxford Drive. If an emergency arose, they were contacted by beeper or phone. And they arose all the time.

“We’d take the ambulance to the grocery store,” says Jennings, “because we were running night and day and couldn’t leave it. We carried our beeper inside and bought our staples first. If it went off we left our groceries where they were and went. We’d return later and finish. They were never bothered.”

Confusion often occurred over the location of calls because the village straddled the county line and residents selected their own house numbers. For example, Jennings relates, there was a Green Street located at each end of town and the ambulance was delayed getting there because they were on the wrong Green Street.

Most of the emergencies the crew handled involved auto accidents. When one occurred, the operator transmitted a Code Fox call and everyone responded. Jennings and Scott both agree on the worst accident they handled during their tenure. It happened at the north end of town near Green Thumb Nursery. A young man and woman riding a motorcycle had flown up a road and struck a vehicle heading to Sarasota. The collision killed the three people.

The threat of a serious storm also involved the ambulance service. “They evacuated the beach every time,” says Jennings, “and the residents stayed at the fire hall. The only ones allowed in the area were ourselves, the police, firemen and the power company. We were like an early Disaster Preparedness Team.

Jennings recalls one incident where a storm had hit the beach area but a young couple had remained behind trying to sandbag their house to save it. “Their car was sitting there, waiting,” she remembers, “but the water rose so fast, they had no time to get to it. They could just grab their baby, and we had to run them out of there.

“Every situation was different,” she says. “You had to make a decision right there on the spot.”

On the other hand, there were those emergencies that were a true joy. For example, Jennings relates a story about a run they made on their next to last day with the service. “No one delivered babies except a the hospital in Sarasota. We had this call from a woman who was expecting her third child. She’d been waiting for her husband to come home and take her but he hadn’t arrived. We drove her into Sarasota but discovered that construction had closed the road at Stickney Point. We had to detour from one road to the next to make it to the hospital. All the while I’m holding her legs and saying ‘Breathe deep, dear, breathe deep,’ and Clyde’s getting ready to make the delivery, which we had never done before. We never had to, but when we reached the hospital they rushed her upstairs and a few minutes later the baby was born.”

Jennings pauses, then chuckles. “When the poor husband arrived, he was so excited he could hardly sign the slip stating we had taken her to the hospital.”

Yet, while some memories may be grim, both Jennings and Scott agree that they provided a needed service to the community. “This is not I done, this is WE done,” says Jennings. “Englewood was like a big family back then. We cared about our neighbors and friends.”

Scott agrees. “Everyone cooperated,” he says, “because we wanted to provide a first class ambulance service to the community.”

Bonnie Jennings is proud of the four and a half years Clyde and she spent working with the ambulance service. Today she is employed at the Englewood Hospital and occasionally runs into someone whom she remembers from an emergency. It gives her a good feeling to know the service she provided to that person. It all goes back to that night in the Food Pantry. “What’re you gonna do?” she says. “It was needed.”