Am unable to continue this update. Maybe it will no longer be needed.
Sandy

THE AIR MEDICAL MEMORIAL

Please visit the website and see what you can do to help. airmedicalmemorial.com.

FIVE YEARS

Five years after Erin was killed, the F.A.A. has released new rules for Air Medical.

AIR MEDICAL MEMORIAL HONORING CREWS

I am happy to announce the site for the Air Medical Memorial honoring the people on the list to your left has become a reality. This has been the dream of Steven Sweeney and his brother Kevin Sweeney and with the help of wonderful volunteers and donors is coming true. Go to www.airmedicalmemorial.com to see the site and see how you can help. Thanks Steven and Kevin.

THANK YOU STEVEN SWEENEY

Thank you Steven for your continuing efforts to honor flight crews who have lost their lives in the line of duty. Your dedication to finding those crews from the past is remarkable.

MISS ME BUT LET ME GO

When I come to the end of the road and the sun has set for me,
I want no rites in a gloom-filled room, why cry for a soul set free,
Miss me a little but not too long and not with your head bowed low,
Remember the love that we once shared, Miss me but let me go.
For this journey that we all must take, and each must go alone,
It's all part of the Master's Plan, a step on the road to home.
When we are lonely and sick at heart, go to the friends we know,
And bury your sorrows in doing good deeds,
Miss me but let me go.
Poem by Kristi Bishop, sister-in-law of Flight Nurse Jana Bishop, Killed in the line of duty, June 8, 2008

Remembering Always

Erin crashed about 9:15pm on September 29,2005. No one survived. Erin was found by the Coast Guard the next day in Puget Sound. How long did she survive her injuries, not more than minutes they said. I know Steve, Erin and Lois did everything possible to save themselves on that nine minute flight. Steve was a very experienced pilot, both nurses would be doing what he needed them to do.

No salvage effort was made until Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, got the Navy involved. The Navy was unable to recover enough of the helicopter to determine the cause of their crash. Steve was recovered eight days after the crash, Lois was never found.

The medical community lost three wonderful people that day. We have come to know other families of crews that have been lost. We all suffer the loss of exceptional people.

The names on the list to your left are crews that have died. All but five of the names from the 1970's are missing, some of the 1980's and a few of the 1990's. If anyone can add a name to the list of the missing, please email elrsmom@hotmail.com with the name of the crew member and date of the crash. This blog stands as a memorial to all crews. I hope someday the flight community will provide a fitting memorial for all of these, the lost.

Remembering the Phone Call

Erin landed safely at the airport. As usual she called the next day to let us know she was home. She caught a cold on the flight which was pretty normal for her. Our conversation was a continuation of the problems we had discussed before she left. We reaffirmed that she was on the calendar for the following July.

Erin expressed disappointment that her friend David's project was put on hold for a week. She told me about a friend she met in Turkey who was coming for a short visit. Erin was getting in touch with a dear high school friend during the week. Not feeling too great, she had considered cancelling some plans, but decided to meet with them all anyway.

We touched on the last bad date experience. At the end of our conversation Erin asked me if I thought she would ever find anyone like my husband. I said "sure you will, just don't settle for second best". On that note we said our goodbyes. I'm glad I reiterated our promise to come in July. I'm glad I told her I loved her and would talk to her soon. Soon never came..........

Remembering Our Last Visit

Erin came home for a family party September 19, 2005. Her niece celebrated her 13Th birthday, a big event in a girl's life. Her nephew, just a little guy, turned four on September 11Th.

Erin spent several days visiting friends all over Northern California. She was trying to fit in all these pals she hadn't seen for a long time. When she got to our house, she said she was tired of running around! Erin told us about her friends, many I remembered, other names I had long since forgotten. We laughed about the things they had gotten into in the "old days". Some friends she had lost contact with and couldn't locate.

We talked at length about what she wanted to do over the next year. Erin asked if we would come to Seattle and help her with projects at the condo and "cabin". I would work on the condo, Erin and my husband would work on the cabin. The real term for the cabin was "the primitive money pit".

We spent a couple of days shopping and visiting, making plans. We were coming to Seattle in July of 2006. Erin drove her little rental car to the airport and flew off to Seattle. It was time to go back to the real world. Her vacation was over. Life as we knew it was about to change forever.

Remembering a patient

One flight was related by a co-worker. Erin picked up a young boy who had been burned in a kitchen accident. He of course was scared and in pain. On the flight Erin explained what she was doing, told him she knew how much it hurt. Erin related the story of her burns, and showed him her scars. She told him how much better things would be now, how far burn medicine had come since the "old" days. Erin explained the process he would go through during treatment at the hospital. The little boy got to the hospital and treatment began. When the staff told him.....he would say,"yes, Erin told me....., Yes, Erin said.....He still talks about "his Erin". What we do lives on after we have gone...................

Remembering Erin Again

I got an e-mail from a man who had known Erin in the early EMS days in Santa Rosa. Bob told me the story of his friend and his wife who owned their own small plane. Bob heard that a small plane had crashed on an island in the Sound. That crash was his friend. He had very severe burns. Of course this was one of those awful ambulance flights that would touch Erin's heart and soul. When she turned the pilot over to the hospital she contacted his friend Bob.

Erin kept Bob informed of his friend's condition. Sadly, the couple did not make it. When Erin told him, he thanked her and that was the end of the story.

Much later Bob would discover that the nurse who kept him up to date on his friend was the same Erin he had known all those years ago in California. He said he regretted not knowing his Erin was in Washington but he would always remember her. We pass like ships in the night, missing opportunities to connect.

Remembering the Flight Years

Erin sometimes called from the hospital. Those were not good conversations. It required a lot of listening. It meant trying to pick up on the reason behind the call. Several of those stick in my mind. They were the problem calls. Usually involving an attitude. Hers or someone else who made her angry. One sticks in my mind. I can't relate it on here because it involved someone who would recognize themselves. It was really funny to me and eventually during the conversation Erin began to see the humour in the situation.

One call involved a safety problem and it was not funny. Not then and not now. Now, it is a reminder of the problems in the industry, and although she said she would report it, I don't think that happened. I'm afraid that person is still out there, still ignoring warning signs.

Erin's middle of the night calls were of course the worst. My mom was failing, and those 3am calls always created a panic in me. She usually started by jumping right in with the problem, no small talk, so I soon knew it wasn't mom.

I also got the bad date calls. The dates became a source of Christmas letters that friends and family looked forward to each year. I didn't need to read them, I had already lived through her heartache. Now I miss those calls so much.

God's hand was upon Erin for many years. Then one night it all ended.

Remembering More About Erin

As Erin made the transition from ER nurse to flight nurse, her paramedic experience proved invaluable. She felt once again the huge adrenalin rush from taking that critical person and keeping them alive, reaching the hospital, turning them over to the ER staff. Erin was always a take charge person. She said she was never alive doing the day to day routine of nursing. Even in the ICU it was never enough. She wanted the rush when you knew it was up to you, totally your skill and knowledge, that saved that patient.

Through the years we had discussed the heartbreak she felt when she connected with a patient she couldn't save. That first toddler was a memory she carried to the day she died. The baby that was already gone when they arrived to load from the waiting ambulance. And of course always there were the burn victims.

Very occasionally Erin would mention a problem at work. A pilot who ignored a warning, a lack of equipment she felt she needed. She had me hunt for certain silk long johns to wear under a flight suit she didn't want touching her skin. The boots and helmut she purchased for herself. Looking back how could a mother fail to hear the undercurrent running through these conversations? I never related these requests to crashing. To being again in a fire. Was her only concern about crashing, a fire? Did Erin never consider the alternative?

REMEMBERING

I begin this blog as a form of remembrance. I am not a writer, I was the mother of a flight nurse until September 29, 2005. The list on the left is comprised of wonderful people who are now lost to the medical air ambulance community and to their family and friends.

Erin Reed had been severely burned when a Molotov cocktail intended for another couple landed at her feet. She spent weeks in the hospital and her life was changed dramatically. Erin launched her EMS career as an "ambulance driver". That phrase hated by all EMS medics, but that's what she was. She got her paramedic certifications and worked in Santa Rosa, California. Erin overcame her fear of fire to become a firefighter/paramedic in Marin County California.

Erin and her husband moved to Boston where she was unable to find work as a firefighter. She began working for Boston MedFlight as a paramedic while putting herself through school, choosing nursing as a career. While in Boston Erin fell in love with FLIGHT. Upon graduating from school, she joined her husband in Tennessee and went to work in the emergency room of Holston Valley Hospital. I thought Erin had found her niche and would be there for a lifetime. She gathered friends as she did everywhere, and settled into "life" as she called it. One day I got a phone call telling me she was divorcing and leaving Tennessee. She eventually decided to start her new life in Seattle, Washington.

During the years Erin was on the East Coast, my husband and I had moved to Colorado. We kept in touch by phone and snail mail. When she went to Seattle she persuaded me to get a computer to "keep in touch". I had to go back to the phone as she was not good about returning my e-mails! I saw more of her after the move to Seattle. On one visit to my mom's we talked about her desire to work in flight. She was discouraged as she feared 40 was the age of no return, when the door would close on her dream, and the dreaded birthday was only a few years away. I still remember the phone call telling me she had finally got the job with Airlift. Erin was thrilled, overjoyed, thankful her dream was realized!