JEFFERSONVILLE, Ohio — Fayette County EMS District, marking 50 years of service in 2026, has unearthed another piece of its history: a Washington C.H. Record-Herald clipping from Oct. 26, 1978, describing a pair of highway crash runs answered by its Jeffersonville volunteers and a monthly tally of squad activity.
The district posted the clipping to its Facebook page as part of an ongoing series pulling items from its archives during its anniversary year. The article, headlined “Jeff volunteers proficient with crash victims,” was written by R. Todd Monroe, then vice president of the Fayette County Life Squad, and recounted two accident calls the Jeffersonville unit answered in a single day that week.
Both accidents involved vehicles on U.S. 35-NW, according to the clipping. The article credited the unit’s location near Interstate 71 and several major state highways with giving its emergency medical technicians frequent practice managing traffic-accident victims — work the piece said demanded careful handling, since one wrong move could leave a crash victim permanently paralyzed.
The second of the two runs that day was handled by Roger Spahr, Jim Clawson, Ed Isenberger and Fred Doyle, the clipping said.
Doyle, then in his third year as a Life Squad volunteer, served as crew leader on the run. Outside the squad, the clipping said, he worked as a guidance counselor in the Miami Trace School District, was scoutmaster of Boy Scout Troop No. 67 in Jeffersonville through the Colman Council, belonged to the Knights of Columbus and advised the National Honor Society chapter at Miami Trace High School. Doyle, who was married with two children, told the paper his EMT training came in handy at the school as well, since there was no school nurse on hand to treat injuries and illnesses as they came up.
Isenberger had moved to Fayette County the year before and quickly became active in his community, according to the clipping. After completing his EMT training, he joined the Life Squad and also served as a transfer driver, ferrying patients from Fayette County Memorial Hospital to other facilities when needed. A funeral director at Morrow Funeral Home, Isenberger kept a two-way radio tuned to the squad’s frequency at the funeral home, letting him respond and help coordinate crews whenever a call came in from squad headquarters in Washington Court House. He was a member of the Jeffersonville Lions Club, the article said.
A second item in the same clipping, headlined “Life squad handles five transfers,” reported on the squad’s monthly statistics. Drivers for the squad’s emergency patient transfer service were dispatched five times in September 1978 to move patients from Fayette County Memorial Hospital to other facilities — once to Cincinnati and four times to Columbus — with every patient successfully transferred to a hospital offering more advanced care, Life Squad Coordinator Mary Lines told the paper.
Squad runs for the month totaled 102, according to the report: the New Holland unit answered four calls, the Jeffersonville unit responded to 12, and the Washington C.H. units handled 86. Life Squad Secretary Kathy Monroe said the three units together treated 26 patients with chest pain or shortness of breath, 12 motor-vehicle accident victims and one burn victim that month, along with the squad’s only heart-attack call and its only delivery of a baby en route to the hospital. The remaining runs were listed as various other complaints, she said.
Fayette County EMS District said it plans to keep sharing pieces of its history through the rest of its 50th-anniversary year and has invited community members to share their own memories of the Life Squad and its volunteers.
The information contained in this story was obtained from Fayette County EMS District.
