Turkey day transportation

BLOOMFIELD, Mo. -- Two turkeys, a ham, stuffing, three pumpkin pies, sisters, nieces, distant relatives -- and Gene Underwood was at his sister's house to see all of it on Thanksgiving Day.

Underwood, 79, lives in Golden Living in Bloomfield, Mo. Arthritis keeps him confined to a wheelchair and unable to walk, even with assistance. But he was able to go home for Thanksgiving thanks to the Stoddard County Ambulance District's Home for the Holidays program.

For the 22nd straight year, Stoddard County EMTs and paramedics who pull the holiday shift spent most of the day taking nursing home patients to and from their family dinners. They take patients in any Stoddard County facility to any place inside the county lines to spend the holiday with their family, all for free.

"He couldn't have come," said Jessie Robey, Underwood's sister. "We couldn't have brought him."

After Undjerwood fell in May, his family decided it would be better for him to have full-time care. Underwood has been in the nursing home for six months, but he got to spend his first holiday at home. He said he was looking forward to the food.

"Oh yeah, they'll have a lot to eat," Underwood said before ambulance workers picked him up from the nursing home.

He was the team's fifth pickup of the day. They spent the morning bringing residents to their families and the afternoon bringing them back to the nursing homes.

"It's not bad," said Amy Earles, a paramedic in Stoddard County who was working the Home for the Holidays runs. "You're kind of tired at the end of the day."

The program started more than two decades ago, the brainchild of David Cooper, manager for the ambulance district.

"It's been a great public-relations tool for us, and it's just that time of year where a family should be a family whenever possible," Cooper said.

They stagger the transport assignments so they still have trucks for emergency calls, but Thanksgiving and Christmas tend to be slower days in the ambulance service.

"Some people are still able to be assisted to a car and driven home," Cooper said.

The program is aimed at those residents who do not have the strength or ability to manage that anymore. All the people transported can travel by no other way than ambulance for one reason or another.

Cooper said when they first started the service they only had two or three transports; now the numbers are more like 10 to 15. Thursday ambulance workers transported nine people to and from family get-togethers.

"The families are always so appreciative of what we're doing," Cooper said.

The only negative thing he has heard was from someone who needed an ambulance and then complained when he received a bill. The man told Cooper that if they provided free transports on the holidays his ride should have been free, too. But Home for the Holidays is a special program, Cooper said.

Gene Underwood visited with his sister, Pansy Dennis, left, and his niece, Charlotte Haggard, on Thursday in Bloomfield, Mo.

"It's just sort of our gift back to the community for Christmas and Thanksgiving," he said.

The beauty of all of it is they get to go back home and they get to see their home again and be with the family and see the tree and lights and smell the food, he said. "For a lot of these people that we transport it is their last year home."

Cooper said he remembered the first time they provided the service to the nursing home residents.

"One man, the thing he was most excited about was when we pulled him into the house he could smell the food," Cooper said. "His wife had been baking pies all day."

The reactions vary. Another man had planted trees at his home before going into the nursing home. When the ambulance workers unloaded him, he insisted they bring him to the side of the house to see how the trees were doing.

Underwood said the pecan pies were his favorite part of Thanksgiving, but that they weren't going to have any this year.

"Jessie said pecan pies was bad for you," he said. He insisted he wasn't going to eat any, but his niece, Charlotte Haggard, walked into the house and held out a homemade pecan pie.

"I made it just for you," she said.

"I might eat a piece then," he replied.

charris@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 246