It’s hard to imagine what an emergency rescuer has seen and done over a half-century of service.
Joe Thompson was a member of the Eatonton—Putnam County volunteer rescue service, which started in June 1974. He retired this June after serving a full 50 years.
“I’ve seen a lot and done a lot,” Thompson said. “It hasn’t always been pleasant. I’ve worked a lot of wrecks and fatalities of people that I know. But in a way, it was rewarding to be able to do that. I can handle trauma; I can handle blood; I can handle death. The Lord has just given me the ability to deal with things like that.”
At the June 25 Putnam County Board of Commissioners meeting, Thompson was recognized by Putnam County Fire Chief Thomas McClain and presented with a plaque bearing the inscription: “Our community and its citizens and visitors have been made safer by your tireless dedication to public safety. Our community is forever indebted to you for your service.”
But Thompson said he was “just one little piece of the puzzle, one of many that has made Putnam County a better place to live.”
Thompson lived in Putnam County until he was about seven years old when his family moved to Statham for his father’s job. They returned when he was in sixth grade, and he’s remained ever since.
He still lives on his family’s old dairy farm on Greensboro Road, just a couple of miles out of the city. The dairy closed in 1970, but Thompson kept horses on it until a couple of months ago. He took them to annual futurity competitions in Augusta and later to Perry each year. These days, Thompson still tends to 12 laying hens and supplies eggs to several friends and neighbors.
He fondly remembers his youth, attending school where The Plaza is now, working on the farm in the mornings and evenings, and doing his homework before bed.
“It gives you a good work ethic,” he said.
As an adult, Thompson started working as a meter technician for Georgia Power, a job he held for 37 years. Though it might appear he wouldn’t have time to be a rescue worker, it seemed to be his calling.
He was there when Putnam’s rescue group was just an idea. He said Lynn Stanford called a meeting in 1974 after recognizing the need for people who could be called out to handle emergencies in the county. Thompson said he and his best friend, James Gregory, immediately joined, and Gregory became the county’s ambulance service director and safety director.
Initially, Putnam County Rescue was strictly a volunteer group and didn’t even have any equipment.
“We mostly just did searches when somebody was lost,” Thompson recalled. “We’ve got a lot of National Forest land here and people coming to hunt and fish, so mostly we were a search group. And car wrecks, we helped with car wrecks.”
Thompson recalled that the county later supplied them with an old bus, and the group members removed half the seats, put a stove in the back, and used it as a command center. They also communicated with each other using CB radios.
They also started getting some rescue tools together and even made some themselves.
“We got some sledgehammers, and we’d take old car springs and grind them down and put edges on them that we could use to beat on metal and tear it apart,” Thompson recalled. “We just started putting stuff together. It was handmade, but it worked.”
That initial group of rescuers also started attending training classes and holding drills to test what they’d learned. At about the same time, the county’s ambulance service was established with two small vans converted into ambulances.
Previously, locals just relied on funeral home hearses to take them to the hospital, Thompson said.
The rescue crew also became certified in basic first aid and CPR and, in 1978, earned official EMT certification so they could help on the ambulances under Gary McElhenney's leadership.
“Big cities like Atlanta had ambulance services and EMTs, but not rural areas, so we were kind of ahead of the game on that,” Thompson said.
Before the ambulance service was established, Thompson said county patients would just be strapped down on a stretcher and perhaps bandaged a little before being driven to the hospital. He marvels at modern technology, which now allows ambulance medical personnel to stay on the scene and stabilize the patient before beginning transport.
“They can load you on a helicopter and have you at a trauma center in Macon in 15 minutes,” he observed. “It’s just so much more advanced than it used to be.”
Thompson remained EMT certified for 34 years until 2012, but most of his career was spent in rescue. He defined rescue as car wrecks, searches, drownings, “anything where people were trapped and needed assistance or where manpower was needed.”
He recalled vehicles that went off the road and down ravines, where the only way to get them out was to pull them up with ropes and chains, use hydraulic tools to lift vehicles or trees off people, rappel off bridges or down into wells to make rescues, or search the woods for elderly people or a missing child who had just wandered off.
Thompson’s voice cracked with emotion as he described several of the rescues, especially those that turned out to be recovery missions. He also recalled some patients in the back of the ambulance that he never dreamed would survive, but they did.
He remembered the surprising and happy times, too, such as the day he helped deliver two healthy baby girls in the back of the ambulance while parked on the shoulder of I-20.
Throughout his entire conversation, Thompson credited the county commissioners, county managers, and fire and law enforcement chiefs for working together to keep the Putnam County Rescue Department well-equipped for their jobs.
“It’s just been very rewarding for me to know that I was able to be a part of an organization in the county that helped people in need,” the 71-year-old said. “I’m just one little piece of the puzzle, one of many that made Putnam County a better place to live. I was lucky I was able to make 50 years of doing it.”
He said life has been even better than that.
“My life has been very rewarding,” he concluded. “I’ve got a wife, Mary Lee, who is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. We’ve been married for 37 years. Basically, I’m just a poor country boy who’s done a lot of things right in my life.”