At 7 p.m. Friday at the Stony Creek Volunteer Rescue Squad headquarters, Chief Dennis Williams radioed the Nash Central Communications dispatcher to announce, with a heavy heart, that the rescue squad and the Stony Creek ambulance service were signing off from service.
That specific time on New Year’s Eve officially marked the end of the Stony Creek organization having been in existence since 1956.
The organization began as a firefighting service based at what today is the U.S. 64 interchange for Benvenue Road.
The rescue squad was organized in 1959. Generally, rescue squads use special equipment and skills to free and save people who are trapped.
By 1961, the Stony Creek organization had two fire trucks, an ambulance and a rescue truck.
In 1976, the organization dedicated the present much-larger headquarters, which is off Country Club Road.
Along the way, the organization also became a mix of paid personnel and volunteers.
In August 1994, the Telegram reported that Stony Creek’s firefighting service came to an end due to annexation by the City of Rocky Mount.
In December 2005, the newspaper reported that the then-Nash County Board of Commissioners approved consolidating emergency medical services operations, including Stony Creek’s, under county control, effective at the start of July 2006.
At the end of 2021, Stony Creek had been focused on providing a backup ambulance service for Nash County and a search and recovery dive team.
Williams said the dive team will continue as part of the North Carolina K9 Emergency Response Team, which is based in Wendell.
The emergency response team furnishes highly trained volunteer search dog teams and also has sonar to quickly conduct searches of ponds, lakes and rivers.
Williams said that as part of the arrangement with the emergency response team, the Stony Creek building and what had been three Stony Creek vehicles will remain in service.
Another Stony Creek vehicle is now in use by the Battleboro Community Volunteer Fire Department.
Williams, in an interview with the Telegram not long before the sign-off Friday evening, summed up the Stony Creek organization’s bottom line: “We ran into a situation where we cannot get volunteers that’s willing to come out and give their time.”
Not only that, but Williams also spoke of volunteers having to meet standards of training similar to those of paid personnel and of there being a different breed of people than in the past.
Williams said back then there seemed to be more farmers and people who were more community-oriented, as opposed to people working in Rocky Mount and in the Raleigh-Durham area.
“We just had to face the facts that we had come to the end of our time,” he said.
The decision to move toward closing the rescue and ambulance services began about eight months ago, he said.
As for his thoughts about having to make such a decision, Williams said, “It rips my heart out.”
“It rips me up,” Williams said. “It really does because this is my life, these are my family.”
Williams, 64, joined the Stony Creek organization in 1971 at age 13 as a junior firefighter.
“A lot of folks don’t understand what it’s like to depend on somebody else unless you’ve been in law enforcement, the military or emergency services,” he said.
At the same time, he said he believes there is a positive in having saved lives and having helped people live longer.
He said of responding to calls to help people who cannot help themselves, “We don’t do it for a pat on the back. We don’t do it for glory. They say that we’re the hometown heroes. I don’t agree with that. My family is the hometown heroes.”
Cleveland Hunt, 70, who has served on the Stony Creek board, came aboard with the organization in 1969.
Hunt told of having believed there had to be a better way to respond to injured people after having, when he was a child, seen an accident involving a girl being hit while she was on a bicycle.
He told of seeing an ambulance belonging to a funeral home and of seeing two men in suits get out of the vehicle, pick the girl up without providing her any first aid and put her on a stretcher for transport to the hospital.
How times have changed, particularly with the advent of required training.
Hunt told of working as an emergency medical technician and as a firefighter before becoming a paramedic and later going on to serve Nash County.
Hunt also used to teach at Nash Community College.
“And I told my students: Treat all your patients just like your family because they are somebody’s family,” he said.
Overall, regarding the end of the Stony Creek organization, he said he told his wife earlier that, “When I woke up, I had this sad feeling in my heart all day today, because, I mean, 65 years is a long time to serve a community.”
Joseph Bradshaw, 67, has served as president of the Stony Creek organization.
Bradshaw told of first thinking back when he was much younger that he was going to become a mechanic — his neighbor was an automobile transmission specialist — and Bradshaw told of eventually working in a support personnel position at the U.S. Post Office downtown.
Bradshaw told of his goal in life having been to deliver mail until one day when he was working with the Jaycees at the fairgrounds. That was when Bradshaw saw his best friend in school approach him wearing a Stony Creek uniform.
The two began conversing and the next day, the friend brought Bradshaw an application to join the organization.
That was 1975 and Bradshaw came aboard.
Bradshaw spoke of a time when the Stony Creek organization was receiving a large volume of calls and of the organization having been a rarity in having paramedics in this part of the state.
Bradshaw, like Hunt, eventually also served Nash County.
As for his thoughts about the Stony Creek organization’s chief having to radio the signing off Friday evening, Bradshaw said, “It hurt. That hurt because my life is here.”
Bradshaw echoed Williams about changes in standards and being unable to find volunteers anymore.
Bradshaw more specifically spoke of times today being quite different in households compared to when he was coming up, noting that the wife was at home and the husband worked for a living.
“And then all of sudden, the wife had to go work,” he said. “Nowadays, one of ’em (has) got two jobs and got children.”