06/13/2026
Sitting alone in my empty classroom after a long day of teaching, I found myself drifting back through the years.
I thought about the young 18-year-old EMT-A who started his career in EMS in 1975. A few years later, in 1979, I became a paramedic. Like so many of us, I was young, fearless, and convinced that tomorrow would always come.
I spent much of my career working in the City of Cleveland with Cleveland EMS, one of the busiest EMS systems in Ohio. Over the years, I accumulated enough war stories to fill volumes. Stories of tragedy, triumph, chaos, heartbreak, and miracles. But tonight, those aren't the memories that occupy my thoughts.
Instead, I find myself thinking about the people.
The friends.
The brothers and sisters with whom I shared ambulances, emergency rooms, fire scenes, and countless sleepless nights. We were just kids doing unbelievable things under tremendous stress, constant scrutiny, and impossible expectations. We saw things most people never will. We carried burdens we rarely spoke about. We laughed when we needed to cry and somehow found the strength to answer the next call.
Bonds were forged in unseen fires, and sometimes in very real ones.
Together we stood in the darkness for people having the worst day of their lives. We held strangers' hands as they took their last breath. We delivered babies into the world. We comforted grieving families. We celebrated saves and mourned losses. We learned lessons no classroom could teach.
Now, decades later, I sit in front of a classroom as an EMS Instructor Coordinator and Program Director, telling stories of what once was. The faces looking back at me belong to a new generation. They hear the stories, but they can never truly know the people who helped write them.
Many of those friends are now old.
Many are gone.
And I miss them more than words can express.
Sometimes I wonder: Did we make the world a better place?
Did we help advance medicine, even in some small way?
Did we improve the relationship between paramedics, nurses, physicians, and the countless healthcare professionals who stood beside us?
Or were we simply fortunate enough to find extraordinary friends while we were young—friends who journeyed through life with us, grew old beside us, and left us with stories that only we can truly understand?
Perhaps the answer is all of the above.
The world may never fully know the impact made by generations of healthcare providers. The lives we saved often went on without us. The patients rarely saw the sacrifices behind the uniform. History books will not record most of our names.
But somewhere, someone lived to watch their children grow because we answered a call.
Someone celebrated another birthday because a nurse never gave up.
Someone survived because a physician took one more chance.
Someone found comfort because a respiratory therapist, dispatcher, firefighter, technician, aide, or caregiver was there when it mattered most.
The measure of our lives was never found in awards, promotions, or recognition.
It was found in service.
And perhaps our greatest accomplishment was not the medicine we practiced, but the people we became and the friendships we carried along the way.
As I sit here in the quiet of this empty classroom, I realize that while many of my friends are gone, they are never truly absent. They live on in the stories we tell, the lessons we teach, the patients we helped, and the generations that follow behind us.
We were young once.
We did extraordinary things together.
And though time has taken much from us, it can never take away the privilege of having shared that journey.
To all my friends—those still here and those waiting beyond the horizon—thank you.
You made the long nights bearable.
You made the impossible seem possible.
And you made this life worth living.
I miss you.
More than you'll ever know.
