They’ve seen it all

By ANDREW MCGINN
a.mcginn@beeherald.com

It comes as a shock — like, delivered straight to your heart’s sinoatrial node — to learn that Greene County residents weren’t immediately sold on the benefits of having an ambulance service at the ready.

When husband and wife paramedics Dennis and Marcia Morlan returned home to Jefferson 30 summers ago to take over operation of Greene County EMS, Inc., there were actually more than a few quiet nights.

“This thing was not doing its potential,” Dennis Morlan recalled recently. “An ambulance service should do 10 percent of the population in EMS calls.”

Beginning July 1, 1986, the Morlans and their staff received just 294 calls their entire first year of service.

“A lot of it,” Marcia Morlan explained, describing how people just 30 years ago still dealt with medical emergencies, “was ‘stuff them in the car and go.’ ”

“And you’re playing Russian roulette with those cardiac patients,” Dennis Morlan added.

Thirty years later, Greene County EMS has three ambulances.

With an average of 800 service calls per year, it’s not uncommon for all three to be on the road at once.

A new ambulance being readied for Greene County EMS at Arrow Manufacturing in Rock Rapids will replace a 1998 unit bearing 203,000 miles and is set to be delivered July 1 — 30 years to the day the Morlans began widening Jefferson’s view of emergency medical services.

In that sense, the Morlans took emergency medical services locally from nickelodeons to CinemaScope in less than five years.

“Everybody assumes I’ve done this forever,” Dennis Morlan, now 72, said.

Saving lives is actually the Jefferson native’s second act, having spent 20 years in the movie theater business.

What began with running the projector his senior year of high school at the local Iowa Theatre at $27.50 a week  — “I was one of the richest kids in high school” — led to a career in management with Central States Theatres, a regional theater chain owned by the Blank family of Des Moines (they of Blank Park Zoo and Blank Children’s Hospital) and at one time the largest operator of drive-ins.

The chain’s big claim to fame was that in the 1930s, Myron Blank had introduced the concept of popcorn as a movie-going snack.

Seriously.

Hey, somebody had to be that guy.

A 1962 graduate of Jefferson High School, Dennis Morlan found himself working for Blank and Central States as a student at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls.

Before long, he was running Cedar Falls’ Regent Theatre and Hillcrest Drive-In.

He calls that chapter in his life “ancient history,” but, frankly, here was a guy who at one time could persuade people to part with their money to see “Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine” at the drive-in.

It wasn’t too much harder to convince people to call for an ambulance at the first tinge of chest pain.

“I’ve got a solid understanding of advertising,” Morlan said.

Unfortunately, there was little money to spend on advertising for Greene County EMS at first.

The Morlans instead hit on an even more ingenious marketing tactic, taking their first defibrillator — “a hell of a boat anchor,” Dennis remembers — on a cross-county goodwill tour.

“We went to any and every club that would have us,” Marcia Morlan said.

They developed a complete presentation for community groups showing what the defibrillator was capable of doing.

“That was the best public relations thing that we did,” Marcia Morlan said. “We reached a lot of people that way.”

For Greene County EMS, it was a turning point.

In this, their 30th anniversary year, the Morlans coincidentally received a $25,000 grant from the American Heart Association in late May for the purchase of a Physio-Control Lifepak 15, a monitor/defibrillator capable of transmitting data to hospitals that provide advanced cardiac care.

“I wanted to be here for the 30th,” Dennis Morlan said of the anniversary. “I take a lot of pride in what we’ve done for this community.”

On the other hand, “Mrs. M,” as he calls his wife of nearly 54 years, is admittedly ready for retirement.

In a show of commitment, however, she still faithfully wears a pager.

“We obviously could have retired a long time ago,” Dennis Morlan said.

“I would probably go completely and utterly crazy sitting at home,” he added.

Even with a staff of 14 — seven of whom are able to provide advanced life support — the Morlans are personally on 70 percent of all calls.

“The kids still can’t keep up with me,” said Dennis Morlan, now a great-grandfather just shy of 73.

Rattle off most any address in town, Morlan boasts, and he more than likely can tell you what the house looks like, how many steps lead up to the front door and what their allergies are.

“I could write a book,” he quipped when asked about some of their weirder calls over the course of three decades.

“We’ve had some impaled situations,” Marcia Morlan added.

“We’ve seen things that have made us cry,” she said.

Above all, the job remains challenging.

“Every call out the door is a different challenge,” Dennis Morlan said. “You don’t know what you’re walking into.”

“How would you get someone off the top of a grain elevator?” he asked.

They’ve plowed through snow drifts and navigated floodwaters to reach people in their moment of need.

“It’s amazing the messes people get themselves into,” he said, “and what we get them out of. There’s an unwritten law that says the 400-pounder lives on the top floor of the apartment building.”

The real challenging stuff, however, is handled by Mrs. M, a 1963 JHS grad.

She learned insurance billing purely by trial and error.

“Mrs. M is what makes this place work,” Dennis Morlan said. “The lady is a mathematical genius.”

Fittingly, the future Mr. and Mrs. M had met in high school. In Harry Hagedorn’s algebra class, to be exact.

Like so many of their classmates, they “very promptly left” Jefferson after graduation.

Returning to Jefferson one day, let alone returning to Jefferson as live-saving paramedics, was something no one expected.

“Who in the hell would have ever dreamed?” Dennis Morlan said.

Then again, they now know as well as anyone how unpredictable life is.

“You don’t know what’s going to happen one minute from now,” Marcia Morlan said. “One minute you’re sitting here, the next we’re picking you up off the floor.”

Ironically, the Morlans now find themselves coping with a shortage of EMTs around the county, as young people take their training and abandon their rural roots.

Greene County EMS covers most of Greene County as a result.

“We don’t have as many shootings and stabbings as the city,” Marcia Morlan said, “but medically, they’re going to see it all here.”

Dennis Morlan can’t quite recall how he got involved in the volunteer fire service while working for Central States Theatres in Hastings, Neb.

But an EMT class around 1980 “must have done it,” he said.

Going to work for Adams County Ambulance in Nebraska, Dennis Morlan soon began teaching emergency medical services at Central Community College.

Mrs. M was running a shoe store in Hastings when she, too, decided to become an EMT.

“We came home with thousands of calls under our belt,” Dennis Morlan said. “We’d just about seen it all.”

Like many other Greene County expatriates, Morlan has his mom to thank for playing a part in luring them home.

By 1986, Greene County EMS, which holds the county’s ambulance contract, was in need of a new operator.

His mom presumably thought nothing about it when she bragged up her son in Nebraska — the paramedic, the firefighter, the college instructor — to then-county supervisor Frank Tucker.

Tucker seized the opportunity.

“Five minutes later,” Dennis Morlan said, “the phone rang.”

In 1988, Tucker again convinced Dennis Morlan to take on the additional responsibility of being Greene County’s emergency management coordinator.

“Frank said nothing ever happens around here,” Dennis Morlan said, “and we don’t want to pay you much.”

He loves to joke that Tucker lied about the first part — and was right about the second.

Morlan also helped establish 911 service in Greene County, and played a major role in the addressing of rural residences to aid first responders.

Then, 20 years ago, he became the county’s medical examiner after a car crash on U.S. Highway 30 during a blizzard claimed the lives of three.

The blizzard caused a “tremendous delay” in getting a medical examiner to the scene, Morlan said.

“They’re not dead until they’re pronounced dead by the medical examiner,” he said.

He has since responded to 280 calls as the county’s medical examiner.

People have been lost to car crashes, suicide and even first-degree murder.

“No one better understands how fragile life is than we do,” Morlan said.

Burnout can be a very real occupational hazard.

Many people in their profession “get to the point they can’t deal with it anymore,” Marcia Morlan said.

Dennis Morlan, whose early career was built on Hollywood motion pictures, now “cannot take any sort of violence” on the screen.

“We watch a lot of HGTV,” he said.

But after 30 years in the EMS business together, the best medicine remains their marriage.

“We’ve both walked in those shoes together,” Dennis Morlan said. “Thank God we’ve got each other.”