Christmas at Mystic River Ambulance

Christmas at the Ambulance Building
These volunteers forgo a traditional Christmas to keep others safe

By Leslie Rovetti

Mystic -- For people who celebrate Christmas, Christmas Eve and Christmas day are usually days to spend with family. Sure, there are some people who must work on holidays - hospital staff, firemen, farmers, and others who hold the lives of people and animals in their hands. But luckily for Mystic and elsewhere, there are people so dedicated to helping others that they will forgo time with their families and friends to make sure we're safe, and they do it without pay.
    On Christmas Eve and Christmas day, volunteer crews of at least two people each will be staffing Mystic River Ambulance, listening for the tones that indicate a 911 medical emergency. Glenn A. Hathaway will be there on Christmas Eve and Kenneth W. Richards III will be there on Christmas Day.
    Hathaway became an EMT, or emergency medical technician, in 1972. "I've spent more New Years and Christmases in other people's homes than my own," he said. "There's not too much I haven't seen."
    As for 21-year-old Richards, who became an EMT as soon as he hit 16, "this is my first official Christmas day" as a volunteer, he said.
    Both men are on the last leg of a race to see who can take more volunteer calls this year. As of the end of November, Hathaway had taken 183 volunteer calls, and Richards had 169. They're both hoping to break 200.
    "Most people make maybe 100. It all depends on time. I'm single, so I have more time," said the 58-year-old Hathaway. Both EMTs are taking extra shifts to bump up their totals.
    "We're doing Sundays for the rest of the month," Richards said, in addition to their regular shifts.
    The drive to devote this much time to a volunteer cause runs deep, and in the case of these two volunteers, deep in the family.
    Hathaway said he initially got involved because "my father was. I started with the Hooks (Hook and Ladder Company) in Mystic" in the early 1960s. Prior to 1972, there was no distinction between a fireman and an EMT. When Hathaway decided he wanted an EMT license, he joined the Hoxie ambulance company, which eventually became Mystic River Ambulance. The tradition passed on when Hathaway's son, Jay Stuart, became an EMT 13 years ago.
    "I guess it rubbed off," Hathaway said about his son.
    For Richards, becoming an EMT was also a family affair. "I've always grown up with Mystic River," said the son of Old Mystic Fire Chief Kenneth W. Richards Jr. "I was the first junior member here. I fought to get in."
    "My mother and father convinced me that it would be the right thing to do - that good ol' Catholic upbringing," Richards added with mock exasperation.
    Both of Richards' parents are Mystic River Ambulance members, and his mother is also an EMT instructor. Richards' younger brother has become an EMT, following in the family footsteps.
    Both men said the holidays can be a busy time for EMTs, but there are no guarantees of either work or peace.
    "You can never tell. You just never know," Hathaway said. Some nights there's nothing, and sometimes "it's call after call after call."
    One reason Christmas might be busy is because of all that free-flowing eggnog. Another reason, sadly, is that "it brings out a lot depression," Hathaway said.
    The calls they get run the full gamut of human injury. Sometimes, they're called to pick up someone who's fallen out of bed.
    "We get those at 3:00 in the morning," Richards said.
    "We've gone for cut fingers. It all depends. Some people panic," Hathaway said.
    A lot of their calls come from nursing homes, because there are so many of them in their coverage area.
    "A typical night is usually one nursing home call," Richards said. "If a night goes by and we get nothing, that's unusual."
    The worst injuries they see come from high-speed car accidents. "The highways tend to be the worst calls ever," Hathaway said.
    Richards said he saw one accident on Route 95 that had him so rattled he stopped volunteering for three months. But he eventually was able to return to duty.
    Other than that one accident, Richards said there's only thing that turns his stomach - vomit.
    "I don't do well with vomit," he said. "The (para)medic makes fun of me. I get pale and sick."
    But what about a bloody compound fracture?
      "No, that's nice," Hathaway said.
    "Glenn's got a stomach of iron," Richards added.
    "A lot of people think we're sick," Hathaway said about the casual way they discuss blood and gore. "But that's how we get rid of it, talking it out."
    Missing out on a traditional Christmas doesn't seem that important to these two volunteers. Richards said he once left his own birthday party to take a call, and had to leave his Grandmother's 60th birthday for the same reason.
    "She understood. She's my dad's mom," he said. Dad, of course, was racing to the firehouse on his bicycle to answer the siren when he was 15.
    "You feel bad, but you know deep down in your heart that it's the right thing to do," Richards said.
    Richards said that he'd like to become a paramedic by the time he's 25, even though the training is expensive and there will be no high-paying job to reward him when he 's done.
    "There's no real money in it, but you know what, whatever makes you happy," he said.
    Luckily for us, what makes him and all the other volunteer and paid EMTs happy is watching our backs. Even on a holiday.