Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 20, 1990                   TAG: 9006200372
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MUSEUM WING

But until 1928, such squads - specializing in fast responses to medical emergencies and basic treatment until patients can be gotten to a hospital or physician - did not exist. That's when Julian Stanley Wise, a Roanoker who died in 1985, organized the first volunteer rescue squad in the world.

Wise's Roanoke Lifesaving and First Aid Crew still serves Roanoke. The idea became a movement that spread across much of the globe.

Seeking to establish a permanent reminder of the rescue-squad story - and Roanoke's leading role in it - is the Julian Stanley Wise Foundation. Its proposed $1.8 million exhibition in a new wing of the Roanoke Valley History Museum at Center in the Square is to be called "To the Rescue." The exhibit is scheduled to open in mid-1991.

In the years since 1928, much has changed. No longer is racial segregation the order of the day. (Roanoke was the home also of the first black volunteer rescue squad.) No longer are female crew members a novelty.

The advance of medical knowledge and technology means that well-trained rescue-squad members now must devote many hours earning certification marking various degrees of expertise. One result has been a trend toward paid rescue workers.

Yet the notion of volunteer rescue squads still thrives. In Roanoke and elsewhere, professionals can complement the work of volunteers; they do not replace it. Voluntarism helps keep emergency services affordable, and helps maintain the esprit de corps that's a hallmark of topflight crews.

The story of Roanoke and rescue squads is familiar to many, but perhaps not familiar to as many as it should be. The Roanoke model periodically attracted national publicity into the 1950s; less is heard about it today.

By establishing a wing in the history museum, the foundation's leaders hope to help revive a piece of history too often untold - much as Wise, by launching the rescue-squad movement, helped revive untold numbers of lives.