Barry Bashkoff

I think I did this once before, but I thought I saw some mention and confusion of how and why Five Quad was started.  So here is the straight story from the horse’s mouth. 

I was a transfer student to SUNY-A in September 1970 (from Nassau Comm College). In fact I was one of the first 200 "MEN" to occupy Indian Quad (no girls) which was only two low raises and we had to eat out meals on State Quad, but by mid semester Indian guys were eating meals all over campus. We had no cafeteria, we had no carpets on the hall floors, we had no doors on the toilets for the gang bathrooms....

I digress..............

I transferred to SUNYA only knowing two people, so my weekends were pretty boring, so sometime in September or October 1970 I got some school spirit and went, not very far from Indian Quad to the old football field. Nothing like you have now...There were stadium seats on one side of the gym building and just an angled hill on the campus center side. I sat by myself on a blanket to enjoy the game. It was fun and I was enjoying it when an Albany player got hurt. The whistle blew by the referee and he motions to the side line for help. A couple of people, I had no idea who  ran out on the field to the fallen SUNYA football player.  Now I had just spent 2 plus years on the Wantagh Fire Department Rescue Squad at home while I was attending high school and my two years at Nassau Community, so I was concerned and very curious how this would be handled. He was hurt pretty badly I guessed, as they were not getting him to his feet right away. He laid motionless on the grass.

While evaluating this football player a trainer or a coach or somebody motioned or signaled to the bench. (I figure this was the motion to enable EMS.....wrong.)

This motion, hand gesture or pre arrangement signal (before real portable cell phones) started the process of what appeared to be a little old man sitting almost at the top of the home team bleachers, to start to move. I remember watching him take each step slowly until he reached the ground, then he shuffled over to the side lines and was escorted onto the field like he was the great PUMBA.

Once he got to the player, then an army looking litter was brought out, and after this gentleman in a long black top coat and Frank Sinatra looking hat, looked the player over, the player was then moved from the cold ground to the army litter and gently taken off the field.

I remember watching everybody walk slowly off the field, carrying the injured kid, the coaches,trainers,water boys and the man in the long black coat. I was now very interested as where this injured player went next. I didn't have to wait long,the player, who was on the army litter, was then put on the ground on the side lines, where the man in the long black coat waited with him and others. There was a referees whistle and the game proceeded.

In my head I went nuts....but then I heard a siren in the distance so I felt a little better because I envisioned an ambulance to arrive..wrong again...what I saw was none other than an Albany Police Car, The old black and white. ( I also think campus security was there). Upon arrival there were no more sirens off in the distance.

The Albany cop came to the sidelines, spoke briefly with the man in the long black coat and then walked back to his patrol car. With in minutes, I heard another siren and then saw "Doctors Ambulance" pull almost close enough to this injured player. I watched them roll their stretcher from the parking lot side end of the stadium seats to the other end where the player was. He was then loaded into the ambulance after the same "roll" back to the ambulance and then off they went ......

Total time from the first whistle blow to the ambulance enroute to the med was over 45 minutes.

I was pretty upset, I went back to the dorm after the game and ran into one of the dorm directors, Bob Brody. I told him the story and asked him why it took so long to get an ambulance to a football player.....he then told me it takes that long for all students and visitors to lovely SUNYA....to get an ambulance.

I started to do some homework and I started to learn the system, (all while attending classes and organizing a Indian Quad rent strike....which was very successful) opps I digress again.

I found out that

A) The little old man in the black trench coat was Dr. Phillip Van Arden. An Albany Orthopedic Surgeon...who I believe was semi retired. 

B) The Director of the Health services center, which back then was a clinic/ office downstairs with room for about 30 sickly students upstairs, was Dr. Janet Hood. Small world she was married to Dr. Van Arden.....

C) Doctors ambulance had a contract with Health services, but there was a rule that any Albany ambulance had to be proceeded with an Albany Police car, which University police didn't like either. That fact helps us later.

Also in my research, I find a document that states ..Edward Drell Stone, the Architect that drew up our campus and owned expansion rights to.....always thought it needed a fire department. At least one single engine because it was on the outskirts of the city. Pine bush fire station does not exist in 1971 and I am sure the Washington ave extension was NOT part of Albany, that happens later.

I also find out that part of Dutch Quad is in the town of Guilderland.

I take all this information to Neal C. Brown, who at the time was "Dean of Student Affairs". I had worked hard with him on the "Indian Quad Rent Strike" so he already knew me. He would later become my mentor.

In our brief meeting after I tell him I want to start an ambulance service at SUNYA, he tells me that I have to get Dr. Hood to approve it. Which everybody knew was going to be impossible. But he is a great mentor and was really behind the idea or just did not like Dr. Hood.

Dr. Hood is totally NOT on Board.

I wrote an email to the ASP (school paper) stating how disgusted I was, and how I felt terrible for that football player and that the administration (Dr. Hood) had rejected my request for a campus based ambulance service.

Then on November 12, 1971, I see letter to the editor in the ASP, the letter is written by a person named Sandy Lufti. I have no idea who she(he) is, but is totally disgusted about the same event. Little does she know when she (he) wrote that letter I was proposing the on campus ambulance service.

So on December 3, 1971, I write a very lengthy and detailed letter to the editor and it is printed. I tell it like it is and how the health service administration is against it.

That  is when things start to happen. From a very small quarter page ad in the ASP I had an organizational meeting I had over 60 students that were interested in a campus ambulance. Remember back then we had a nursing school.

Dean Brown basically advises me, that Dr. Hood will set obstacles and all we need to do is meet those obstacles. I'm up for that.

First obstacle, she threw at as was training. How would we ever get training. Well, at the informational meeting I meet Marc Stern and Bob Davis. Both had some American Red cross teaching experience and at the second organizational meeting we took names and soon started teaching American Red Cross Basic First Aid. While were doing that I went to the NYS Health Department and met with a Carman Mandea. Who was the director of the emergency service division. I had heard through my fire department back home that there was a course call Medical Emergency Technician. Mr Mandea gave me the course paperwork and told me to read it.

At the time to take an MET course you had to already have Basic first aid and Advance first aid. With the help of a friend Marc Stern knew from Ravena, we got a lot of people through both the Basic and Advanced first aid portion of the training. I coordinated a 72 hour EMT course (Name was changed to follow federal standard) at SUNYA Albany using doctors from Albany Medical Center.

It took us a three semesters to train 60 plus people. (2nd sems '71, 1st sems '72 and second ' 72). We continued to offer classes knowing that some of our "members" might graduate before we even got off the ground.

The second obstacle Dr. Hood threw at us was where were we going to get an ambulance. The university wasn't going to purchase it and Mr. Brown was very up front about that. Some how we found out that Oswego College was putting an ambulance together from a van they got donated and worked on themselves. Marc and I drove out their and spent the day with them they were ahead of us in the time line and were beginning to train drivers in this converted phone company truck  they turned into an ambulance.

We came back with a new vision, we called every utility company, Freihofers office,Sears service, anybody we knew that had old vans.  The New York State Telephone company Surplus office on Colvent Ave somehow got our letter and gave us a drab green phone company truck for FREE. It was ugly and as our first real vehicle we got a donation to paint it any color we wanted and we chose all YELLOW.  Two months after we painted it, Albany police decided to paint their Arbor Hill patrol cars YELLOW, now the University was not happy with our color choice.

Marc Stern and this contact of his from Ravena, got us the first real ambulance. It was the all white Cadillac one...I think we all called it Seabiscut. We had another ambulance given to us that was in an accident and had the passengers side fender and hood destroyed. We stored it at the loading dock to State Quad. My friends at the Wantagh Fire Dept knew what I was trying to do here in Albany and bought us a NEW passenger side fender and hood. This ambulance was white with a red stripe and the primed fender and hood was delivered here were matte grey. Carl Schorder and Dennis Mazzer ( Later Dr. Mazer  since deceased) did all the work on that vehicle ...we never got it to start.

So if you weren't keeping count we now had three vehicles. No ambulance service, but three vehicles.

Next obstacle, where were we going to get equipment?. We hit two landfalls here just for the asking. I went to my new found friend Carman Mendea at NY State Health and told him of our plight, he in turn figured out a way to give the University some kind of emergency medical service grant, it included an ambulance stretcher, mattress, a scoop stretcher, Thomas traction splints,(ask someone), blankets, bedpan, urinal almost everything we needed except disposables. I did not know he was doing this until one day a University police officer pulled me out of class and escorted me to the general loading dock where there were mountains of boxes with my name on them. Not only did Mr. Mandea get us one emergency equipment package he got us TWO.

Not sure if it was Marc Stern or Bob Davis who knew someone in Albany County Civil Defense. But for years Civil Defense had been stock piling these emergency previsions for medical use. In the 60's when we thought Russia was going to bomb us, a lot of this Civil Defense stuff was taken very seriously, little did we know. Albany County Civil Defense had rounded up all these kits from all over Albany county and stored them in a Railway Express building in the Port of Albany. I remember me, Marc, Bob Davis Carl Schoder and a couple other met there and I had the Yellow (phone company) van. We were told that there were kits and every kit had band-aids, and roller gauze, and triangular badges, eye pads and anything you would think of and we could take it all or just what we needed cause it was all getting thrown away.

When they opened the door for us, there had to be 10,000 kits. The kits were all self contained in struty boxes piled 6 to the ceiling. Each kit had exactly what they told us plus salt pills, lots of salt pills, tablets to purify water, burn cream, bags of saline and bags of dextrose ( that had expired many years earlier), really good bandage scissors (one per kit), hemostats (one per kit) really thick trauma pads with tails to tie them in place. We set out in two groups. One group dissected each box and threw what we could use in the middle of the floor, while the second group re packaged the stuff we wanted. Pilled it all in the yellow van. We had more disposables then we could ever use, so we used a lot of it for training.

Not exactly sure when but Mr. Brown, knowing this was serious and would eventually be approved asked what our official name was going to be. Stony Brook already had an ambulance service called....what else SUNY@ Stony Brook volunteer ambulance.  We knew Oswego was going to beat us in a start date  but they were Oswego Student run ambulance or something like that.  In a meeting Mr. Brown called me to, he told me that he had some time and was brain storming names and he handed me a folded piece of paper, I still have it somewhere. It was on his personal memo letterhead....from the desk of the Dean of Student Affairs, Neil C. Brown.

SUNYA Volunteer Ambulance

Ambulance Service of the State University of New York At Albany(ASSUNYA)

Albany Student Run Ambulance

Five Quad Volunteer Ambulance .....Bingo....that became our office name.

On a lighter side, on the reverse of this memo were names he already rejected..I will have to find this piece of history for you but one of the rejects he wrote was .

Hood's Haulers.......

When school closed I thought we had met all the obstacles. Over that summer, Dr. Hood informed us thru Mr. Brown that there were no funds available for this "little- wasteful project".

I believe as soon as we return to campus two things happened, I believe Marc Stern and Jane Reich approached the student government for status as a club, like a fraternity or sorority. They said NO. But we could start "Friends of Five Quad ", .

We also decided to try a coin drop as parents brought their children back to school why not hit them up for some cash. Most of the four vehicles we had ......had to be pushed. So we got an ambulance or a reasonable facsimile of an ambulance at each entrance with members (Everyone was told to bring a denim shirt for this purpose, so that it looked like a uniform ) and coffee cans collecting for this ambulance that might or not be getting off the ground. I don't remember how much we got that weekend but it helped us later. 

Its now September 1972, we have ambulances, equipment, trained people, We are still fighting with Dr. Hood. She is now concerned that once we cut ties with Doctors Ambulance in Albany, who will back us up, who will cover summer classes.

At this point I was working in Mr. Browns office as a graduate assistant so I had easy access to him. I got friendly with the owner of Doctors ambulance his son was a fraternity brother of mine (STB) and introduced me to his father. I don't remember his name but he gave a lot of Five Quad people jobs working a real ambulance in Albany. He was okay being the back up ambulance for Five Quad.

Mr. Brown and Dr. Fischer (Director of Residences) found us a not in use luggage room in the basement of Colonial Quad and helped us get furniture from SUNYA Central for this tiny room. Bunk beds, couch, desks it was tiny.

Our first set of radios, came from the campus center, The guys last name started with a"W", we got their old radios, in turn Campus Center got new radios (This guy later got indited for something bad at SUNYA). I had a radio in my car, we had radios in both ambulances and had several portables...all on campus centers frequency... KSL535 Five Quad Volunteer Ambulance went on the air October 1, 1973

We did it, we jumped thru ALL the hoops.....I mean ALL the hoops.

There were some other battles but these were the major one....

Now you know.........

Barry Michael Bashkoff

Founder. Five Quad Volunteer Ambulance Service.