It was nearly 4 a.m. by the time I returned to my rented room on the second floor of the Murray’s home in Woodlawn. I was too wired to sleep, so I drank coffee and listened to my tape. At 8:30 a.m., I called All Things Considered and told the editor what I had. Come down to our studio, she said. I showered, changed into fresh clothes, and drove to NPR headquarters in Washington, DC. By the time I arrived around 10 a.m., ATC host Susan Stamberg had already interviewed Jeff Jerome by telephone. I met Renee Montagne, who produced the segment. The first thing Montagne did was take me to an audio …

The five of us huddled in the dark catacomb beneath Westminster church, waiting to see what might happen. The frozen bare dirt was as hard as concrete, drawing the heat from my body. We passed the time talking and taking turns crawling into ancient family tombs holding generations of skeletons, bones tumbling from crumbling wooden coffins. At around 1:30 a.m., we were startled by a flashlight shining into the catacomb from the outside. Somebody was in the cemetery, trying to peer into the catacomb. We stumbled through the darkness, crawling over burial vaults, trying to get a better view. The…

Edgar Allan Poe is buried at a cemetery established by members of First Presbyterian Church in 1786, located at the corner of Fayette and Greene streets. Back then, the cemetery was located on the outskirts of Baltimore. As the city emerged around it, the cemetery changed over time. In 1852, Westminster Church was built on the cemetery. The towering Gothic Revival structure was built on brick pilings that arch over the graves and burial vaults, creating a catacomb beneath the church. Now known as Westminster Hall and Burying Ground, the property is owned by a foundation managed by faculty of …

In January of 1983, as the birthday of Edgar Allan Poe approached, I called Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum, and reminded him of his offer to let me join him inside Westminster Church and wait for the Poe Toaster. I’d read about the Poe Toaster long before moving to Baltimore. Supposedly, a mysterious stranger visited Poe’s grave once a year and left three roses and a bottle of cognac. Nobody had ever seen the Toaster. Being skeptical of nonsense in general, I wanted to learn more about this phenomenon. I suspected it was a hoax or a stunt of some kind. And Jerome was the …

Encouraged by Tom Nugent during our twice-weekly independent study sessions, I set out to find a news organization that would let me do an internship. Since I had accumulated so many credit hours and fulfilled all my other requirements, all I needed to take for my degree at UMBC was the core emergency health services curriculum. Every semester I had to find internship or electives to fill up my schedule to full-time status in order to remain eligible for financial aid. It wasn’t just idle interest. I needed an internship. I flipped open the phone book, turned to the yellow pages and looked at…

In the accompanying photo, the man on the right wearing a cable knit sweater is Mike Curtis, a former Milwaukee paramedic who was a fellow emergency health services student at UMBC. On the left is Jim Page, one of the fathers of EMS. He was an affiliate faculty of the EHS program and a big supporter of its mission. Back in the 1960s-70s, Page was a batallion chief of the Los Angeles County Fire Department. Through working as a technical advisor on Dragnet and other Hollywood productions, Page became friends with Jack Webb. In early 1970s, after Dragnet had run its course, Webb was fishing …

Aside from the emergency health services classes, I’d also registered for an independent study in order to reach full-time status and remain eligible for financial aid at UMBC. Twice a week, I met one-on-one with legendary feature writer Tom Nugent, who had recently left the Baltimore Sun. I didn’t know anything about Nugent at the time, nor much about Baltimore and its newspapers. Known as the “Wild Man of Calvert Street,” Nugent recently told one journalism class that he did little else but write and drink from 1978 to 1983. According to former Sun feature writer (and Arbutus Patch …

One of the few things I knew about Baltimore before I moved here was that Edgar Allan Poe was buried in the city. When I lived in Memphis, I’d read a story about a mysterious stranger who left a bottle of cognac and three roses at Poe’s grave every year on the anniversary of his birthday, January 19. Nobody had ever seen this person, who was called the Poe Toaster. Supposedly, nobody knew the Poe Toaster’s identity. I suspected the whole thing was a hoax. One day in the fall of 1982, I called up Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum. Jerome was the unofficial guide of Westminster …

It was a relief when classes began at UMBC and I could wade into the emergency health services curriculum. The first semester included courses on management, systems, and the history of emergency medical services. None of the coursework was clinical or medical in nature, since everybody accepted into the program was already an EMT or paramedic. We were being trained to go beyond the streets. We were to become the next wave of paramedic managers, to learn the gospel of the Maryland Way and become its disciples. Once properly trained, we would go forth to develop systems and programs that save …

During one of my exploratory walks around downtown Baltimore, I heard the throaty whump-whump-whump of a helicopter overhead and looked up to see a Bell Ranger coming in low, headed towards buildings a few blocks away. I walked down Lombard Street to the UMAB campus, the helicopter growing louder as I neared University Hospital. Rounding the corner at Penn Street, I saw the six-story parking garage on the left. The roar of the helicopter engine emanating from the garage roof echoed between the buildings. Walking up Penn, I stopped at Redwood and looked to my right. Just as Jon Franklin and …

I had to quit my job drawing blood at National Health Labs once classes began at UMBC in the fall.  The only hours the lab was able to offer me were during the daytime, which conflicted with my classes. I still did several night and weekend shifts at Pharmakinetics, doing draws for drug studies, but I needed a full-time job. Bill Brown, my paramedic friend from New Hampshire, told me of an opening they had where he works, at the pulmonary function lab at St. Agnes Hospital. A part of the respiratory therapy department, the lab does pulmonary function testing and runs blood gas analyses, he …

Over the summer, before fall classes began, one of the emergency health services faculty members at UMBC asked me to participate in a study he was conducting for his Ph.D. Jeffrey Mitchell was a pioneer in the study of a form of post-traumatic stress called critical incident stress. Nearing completion of his doctorate in psychology at the time, Mitchell was gathering data on the prevalence and other characteristics of critical incident stress among EMTs and paramedics. Mitchell is co-founder and president emeritus of the Ellicott City-based International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, …

During one of my visits to UMBC, I stopped by the office of The Retriever, the weekly student paper. I had some experience writing for and doing production of free community newspapers in Memphis. A small handful of articles I’d written were published. None of it was particularly noteworthy. At the time I’d been reading National Lampoon (when it was good) and thought I could do satire. While in nursing school, I wrote an article about chest pain and sold it to Emergency magazine for $75. The article was an overview of the differential diagnosis of chest pain – a guide to all the things that …

After the debacle at the EMT practical exam in Havre de Grace, I had a meeting with training officials at the Maryland Institute of Emergency Medical Services Systems (MIEMSS), located in the venerable Greene Street Building across the street from University Hospital. I decided to meet with them without Bill Brown – not because I thought he or I were wrong in any way, but just to eliminate another variable.  So far his friendship had brought me nothing but trouble. We went over the exam results in detail. Bill and I had each failed three out of the 20 skills testing stations. The multiple-…

Bill Brown and I managed to make it through the EMT refresher course taught at Arbutus Volunteer Fire Department and pass the written portion of the certification process. The only thing remaining was the practical exam – a test of skills. We rode together in Bill’s car to a community center in Havre de Grace, where the next state practical exam was being held.  Dozens of EMTs from across Maryland were there. Several rooms had been set up into stations, each one testing a particular skill. One station simulated the treatment of a burn victim. Another station required the splinting of a …

In the summer of 1982, Sandee Lippmann, my new aquaintance from the CPR training session, invited me to join a group of her friends to go swimming at Oregon Ridge. There’s an old quarry filled with water, with a nice beach, located in the county north of Baltimore City, she told me. You’ll like it. On a blazingly bright Sunday, I packed up a beach towel, coffee and pastries, and my new-found pleasure – the Sunday Washington Post. It was a wonderful, lazy sun-drenched day.  I spent most of my time leafing through the newspaper. The Sunday Post provided terrific reading material – well-crafted …

The theatre building at UMBC was packed, with lines snaking through the hallways. Although the school had been around for 15 or so years, the campus didn’t have much in the way of amenities in 1982. There was no student union yet, nor the University Commons. There was one main cafeteria at the west end of The Quad. The Rathskeller was located in the old administration building up the hill. Most of the student services, including registration, were crowded into the theatre building. I waited in line to schedule my classes, leafing through The Retriever, the weekly student paper. Between the 2-…

All of the second-year and new emergency health services students were invited to a reception at UMBC along with faculty and the special guest, Dr. R Adams Cowley. Bill Brown was there, as was Bill Hathaway, my faculty advisor. I met students from Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere, all who have come to this one-of-a-kind program at UMBC. Even including all of the faculty, it was a small crowd. Dr. Cowley told us that we were a select group of people who represent a vision of the future of emergency medical services. The faculty at UMBC were hand-picked, many veterans of the Maryland Institute for…

The Red Cross called and asked if I’d be interested in helping out teaching a CPR class. I’d checked in with the Red Cross when I moved to Baltimore in the spring of 1982 as part of my program to integrate myself into my new hometown. Back in Memphis I’d taught dozens of CPR classes, and was certified as an instructor-trainer, teaching CPR teachers. Teach a CPR class on a Saturday? Sure, why not. I had nothing better to do. The Red Cross was holding a massive training session at the Inner Harbor campus of Baltimore City Community College. More than 200 people would be trained in one day. They…

Try as we might, Bill Brown and I didn’t fit in with the rest of the class in the EMT refresher course we were taking two evenings a week at Arbutus Volunteer Fire Department. Bill was a paramedic from New Hampshire, and like me an entering emergency health services student at UMBC. It was like a club, and we were not members. Everybody else in the classroom worked at a local firehouse or rescue squad except for us, the two strangers, the unaffiliated out-of-towners. We felt about as welcome as Mormon missionaries at a bachelor party. The instructor, firehouse veteran Don Mackey, had a …