Stokes County silent heroes honored

STOKES COUNTY, N.C. (WGHP) — This month, the Stokes County Emergency Management Services is celebrating 50 years of service.

Many of the first members recall the difficulty of getting the service up and running in 1974.

“We didn’t have phones or two-ways in the beginning,” said Wayne Tilly, who was one of the first to start the service on April 1, 1974. “Many times, we would knock on people’s doors to use their phones if we couldn’t find the house with the emergency call.”

Many North Carolina counties implemented the service in 1974 due to a state mandate for each county to provide ambulance service to medical facilities.

“Before us, someone would either have to drive you to the hospital or call the funeral home,” Tilly said. “The funeral ones were the only ones who had a vehicle you could lay down in.”

“Our first ambulance was outfitted from an ice cream truck,” said Ray Wilson, who helped start the service and later became a supervisor. “We were trained by doctors, and the training would improve.

Today, the department has state-of-the-art equipment with trained paramedics and ambulances that can do everything an emergency room can besides x-rays and sonograms.

Over the weekend, the service department celebrated a half-century of serving the community thanks to the men who first stepped up.

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