Valley Ambulance Authority celebrates 50 years of saving lives in the Moon Township and Sewickley areas
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A Moon Township-based ambulance authority that serves the Sewickley area and more than a dozen other communities just turned 50.
“We’ve come along way,” said J.R. Henry, Valley Ambulance Authority chief and West View mayor. “I’ve been here 16 years. There’s only been three chiefs in 50 years. We come and we never leave.”
Gary Burnworth was its first chief and served in that capacity for about 20 years. The next was Wendy Schulenburg.
Current and former staffers marked the 50th anniversary in October with a celebration at the Montour Heights Country Club in Coraopolis.
A brief history
Established in 1972 as the first municipal ambulance authority in the nation, it began serving Coraopolis, Neville Island, Crescent and Moon townships as well as parts of the Pittsburgh International Airport.
Ambulance service was provided by funeral homes prior to the authority being formed. It started out with two ambulances and 37 volunteers.
VAA added Sewickley, Sewickley Heights, Bell Acres, Edgeworth, Glenfield, Glen Osborne, Sewickley Hills, Leetsdale as well as Leet and Aleppo townships with the incorporation of the Quaker Valley Ambulance Authority in 1974.
Henry said although services are provided under one umbrella, having two ambulance authorities allows for more grant and funding opportunities.
“Instead of creating two ambulance services, they decided Valley would be the primary agency and Quaker Valley would just lease the people from them,” he said. “Instead of going out and building their own building on the other side of the river, they built two ambulance authorities and said, ‘We’ll work together with Valley to staff those.’ Back in the ’70s, that was really good intergovernmental cooperation, and it still remains that way today.”
The original authority building was a two-car garage in an alley in Coraopolis.
Its current headquarters is a two-story building with 10 ambulance bays at 3550 University Blvd.
Henry said the facility is at least five times larger than the two-car garage the authority started out in.
The authority covers 15 communities with about 72,000 residents in 82 square miles.
The nonprofit’s annual budget is about $4 million, with only 17% of that covered by subscriptions from the municipalities. It has 14 vehicles, including seven ambulances.
The ambulance company has 64 employees, 36 full time and the rest part time.
Staff includes 24 paramedics and 30 EMTs with most working 12-hour shifts.
First call
Retired EMT Denny Lewis, 71, of Crescent Township recalled the company’s first call for service on May 15, 1972.
“It was a lady with heart problems,” Lewis said. “Neville Island was the call. It was about 4 minutes away from the station. It came in early in the morning around 7:30 a.m., quarter to 8. We get there. We pulled up front, grabbing all our equipment, excited for that first call.
“Lady comes walking out with a suitcase. She just needed a ride to the hospital. She actually walked to the ambulance.”
Lewis, who served for 15 years, said four people were on the call. The lady was transported to what was then known as Sewickley Hospital.
The authority answered 885 calls its first year. In 1977, it was up to around 2,000 calls per year with an 88% response time of less than 6 minutes.
It now does around 10,000 calls per year with about 3,000 of those being wheelchair/van transports.
Ambulance trip to romance
The ambulance authority was not only a place to work and volunteer, but to find love.
That was the case for retired EMTs Beth and Pete Miles. They’ve been married for nearly 40 years; they met while on a shift one evening.
Beth Miles volunteered at the authority for 14 years, starting in the late 1970s.
“We lived here pretty much when we volunteered,” she said. “We had a kitchen. We had bunk rooms, TV and every movie you could imagine. If you were single, you pretty much worked every holiday so that those with families could be home.”
Pete Miles, a former paramedic, said they would try to sync their schedules so they could see each other more often. Men and women had separate bunk rooms at the time and women had to be home by midnight. That eventually changed to crew rooms.
“You had two crews,” Beth Miles said. “If crew ‘A’ got a call, that light went on and everybody in the boy’s bunk room was awake whether it was your call or not. Same with the other (bunk room). After awhile, we got fed up with that. We said, ‘Look. We’re all big kids. We’ll behave.’
“Crew A got a bunk room, males and females, in bunk beds alone, and (so did) crew B, so you didn’t have to wake everybody up. You just got your group woken up. That was a huge change. We thought we were such groundbreakers.”
Officials estimated more than 2,500 people had volunteered at the authority at some point over the years including firefighters, police and nurses.
“As much as we loved doing it when we did it, we could not do what they do now,” Beth Miles said. “Technology and everything has changed so much. It was more fun because it’s all new stuff. It’s more a job (now). We did it in our free time or all the time we had we spent here.
“Now, it’s definitely a career choice. Just education-wise, they have to go through so much more than we did.”
Other rule changes made over the years included allowing beards and other facial hair, as well as being allowed to eat on shift outside the station or at Sewickley Hospital.
Deputy Chief Denise Fantone said there are no longer bunks, and crews can only spend a maximum of 16 hours on shift.
The authority in the past few weeks received multiple resolutions and proclamations from the communities it serves commemorating the five-decade milestone.
More information about VAA and QVAA is available at valleyamb.org.