THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, April 25, 1995 TAG: 9504250273
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines
His name has become as synonymous with emergency medical care in Hampton Roads as the Johnson & Johnson label is with Band-Aids.
Dr. Frank Marx Yeiser Jr., who played key roles in restructuring the Norfolk and Virginia Beach paramedical services, launching regional and state emergency medical programs and developing the Nightingale air ambulance program and local trauma centers, died of a heart attack Sunday at his home in Mathews County. He was 48.
``I would call Frank the grandfather of emergency medical services'' in the region, said Norfolk's top paramedic, Donald A. Haupt. ``His contributions were overwhelming.''
Time was, a person in a car wreck in the Pungo section of Virginia Beach could expect only basic first aid and, eventually, a long ride to a hospital emergency room - if he or she lived that long.
Today, the victim would receive swift, advanced on-scene care from paramedics, continued by flight nurses during a helicopter ride to one of the area's trauma centers.
He or she would have virtually every chance possible of surviving what is called ``the golden hour,'' that critical first 60 minutes after traumatic injury during which intense medical intervention can determine who lives or dies.
In Hampton Roads, Yeiser, as much as anyone else, put the gold in that hour.
``Frank had the uncanny knack of taking the most difficult situation and breaking it down to the simplest terms,'' said Haupt, who succeeded Yeiser as director of the Norfolk paramedic service, which is now part of the Department of Fire and Paramedical Services.
``He kept one thing near and dear to his heart - and what's in all our hearts: Let's do what is best for the patient,'' Haupt said. ``There were never any political boundaries for him.''
The system Yeiser nurtured is an international model of care-giving efficiency, Haupt said.
``We're so far ahead of the rest of the nation, it's amazing,'' Haupt said. ``We have people from all over the world come to see how our system is put together, how it runs.'' This week, a delegation from Britain is in Hampton Roads. Others have come from as far away as Australia and Russia.
``Frank's legacy will be the unique state of emergency medical services here . . . recognized as one of the finest state and local systems in the nation,'' said Ed Holmes, a health care consultant who worked with Yeiser for years.
Yeiser, who was born in Buffalo, N.Y., and raised in New Jersey, began his medical career as a volunteer orderly.
He was drawn to emergency medicine in part, he said in 1986, by the death of his father in an emergency room after an accident in 1963. ``Those were the days when there wasn't a lot to offer people,'' Yeiser said.
Yeiser entered Lynchburg College in 1964, but studies did not capture his attention and he dropped out. He spent more time working with a friend running a fledgling ambulance service.
He married in 1967 and worked in New Jersey as a research technician. But he ached to return to emergency care. So, in 1969, armed with a grab bag of gear, some worn ambulances and a hefty dose of spunk, he moved to Norfolk, where there were serious problems with the police-run ambulance service.
Physicians & Surgeons Ambulance Service was born.
``I worked 24 hours a day for two years,'' Yeiser once said. ``So did my wife. She did dispatching and billing.''
In 1971, the city bought out the service and hired Yeiser as a consultant. Within two years, he was named the first superintendent of the Paramedical Rescue Bureau.
In 1975, Yeiser returned to college to finish his undergraduate work with new enthusiasm. The kid who wouldn't study a decade earlier earned a bachelor's in biology and chemistry. A year later, he enrolled at Eastern Virginia Medical School and graduated in 1980.
He did his residency at the University of Cincinnati, where he rose to chief resident, and returned to Hampton Roads in 1983, where he launched or nurtured a long list of emergency medical achievements.
Yeiser was ``brilliant, compassionate and always in touch with the human condition,'' said Norfolk City Manager Jim Oliver. ``As a friend, Frank was a gift to me, my family and our community. He was ultimately the healer, but he could build boats, invent rescue craft, turn a phrase in a tense situation, laugh and sing out loud at a country and western concert.''
Even in recent years when doctors told Yeiser he had to slow his pace, he kept at it. And he never forgot that he was serving people.
When one patient said his last wish was to die on his boat, Yeiser made it possible. He visited the man daily to give him his medication. The man died two weeks ago. On his boat, as he wished. ILLUSTRATION: Dr. Frank Marx Yeiserr Jr.
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