Today brought perfect toboggan weather to the Ridge, but the meeting beckoned us inside. Lunch was a buffet of meatballs, rice, peas and carrots, and salad. Dessert was bread pudding baked with melted marshmallow on  top. Both Susan Hansen and Mary Martin had seconds on the delicious dessert and might have managed thirds if the meeting hadn’t begun in earnest.

Sergeant-at-Arms Neal Cunningham was greeted with a bit of jeering from the peanut gallery as he made his way to the podium to give his report. He should have exacted fines for that type of disrespect, but he was in a beneficent mood – or he will get revenge and collect next week. This week’s payments: Marc Glass had his picture in the paper again, although this time there were no numbers under the mugshot; Bob Buettner paid for good weather on Valentine’s Day; Mary Martin paid for Happy Jack’s successful surgery and recovery to date (but his recovery will be in jeopardy if she catches him vacuuming again!) Jay Stewart paid for a nice visit with Mary Sullivan; Dan Larson paid to welcome his newest grandson to the world today; Sue Klock paid for her new granddaughter and for her birthday. We all sang “Happy Birthday” to celebrate the day.  Many club members paid for the UCONN Lady Huskies winning their 100^th straight game.

 

Anwar Hossain paid to make an announcement: He wanted us to know that both he and Diane, who have TSA Pre-check for air travel, and were able to book tickets with it as recently as January 6, were NOT able to book tickets now, post-Inauguration, on the same airline with their TSA Pre-check status. It is profoundly sad to hear this news. Clearly, the Four-Way Test is not being used by everyone right now. Perhaps Rotary needs to take over.

 

President Bill Saunders announced that we have received our first Corporate Membership application from the East Hartford Board of Education. The four members are Nate Quesnel, Vincent Crawford (our guest today,) Amy Bryan and Veronica Marion.

 

Bill also told us that he visited Rachel Buck to deliver this year’s RYLA applications. Then he read a “thank you” from InterCommunity for the $500 the club donated to support their Recovery House. Steve Jacoby presented Bill with a CT River Valley Chamber of Commerce plaque. Steve reminds all of us that we are always welcome to attend Chamber meetings as collective members.

 

Hope Firestone gave an update on the Mystery Ride: it is April 6 and the bus will pick attendees up at the Ridge at 5:15 p.m. Cost is $80/person and we are looking for 10 more people to sign up. The Mystery Ride will be opened to other area club members in an effort to fill the bus. Please call Hope or Dan if you want to get on board!

Our special guests today were Jason Bak and Vincent Maston from Ambulance Service of Manchester (ASM.) Jason is the Business Development and Corporate Compliance Manager, and Vincent is the Operations Manager.

 

Vincent presented a slide show detailing the history of the ASM. The ASM had its humble beginnings in the 1950’s when a local businessman, Roger Talbot, had the great idea of using hearses to help transport people in need of medical attention to the hospital. Over the years, the service evolved and now there is a fleet of 28 Type II ambulances, 2 Paramedic Intercept vehicles, and 2 Bariatric Ambulances. Combined with the ambulance service is the more important paramedic service that began in the 1980’s.

 

The ASM serves East Hartford, South Windsor, Manchester, Bolton and Glastonbury and is sent on all 911 medical calls. In addition, the ASM provides paramedic service to 10 additional communities and transportation services to many more towns beyond.

 

Their goal is to respond to all calls within 8 minutes; currently they are responding in 6 minutes 36 seconds on average. The ASM has a state-of-the-art dispatch center and a two-classroom training facility. The ASM service even includes two paramedics who have been trained to be embedded in a SWAT team to provide emergency services during events that have not yet been cleared for civilian first responders.

 

The presentation was engaging, educational and impressive, and although we may hope to never need their services, it is reassuring to know we will be in the best of care if we do!

 

Onward and upward ~

Susan Hansen