<\/a>April 08, 1999<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Mary Abrams is one of the people in our neighborhood. She is being honored as the 1999 Walworth Firefighter of the Year in recognition of her many years of service to our community.<\/p>\n
Miss Abrams signed up for her first First-aid course 23 years ago, so that she\u2019d know what to do if something happened during one of her 4-H meetings. As a youngster, Mary was an active member of 4-H under the leadership of Abbey Sauer and Les Hall. As an adult, she has her own 4-H group.<\/p>\n
\u201cLes was the one who taught me how to make bread,\u201d she softly chuckled. \u201cIt is still one of my favorite activities to do with the children.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mary also bakes bread for the Baptist Church\u2019s Annual Sheep Shear Festival and numerous baked sales as well as special loaves for shut-ins.<\/p>\n
Mary is a 1974 graduate of Wayne Central. The high school teacher she remembers best is Mrs. Carol Spellman (formerly Miss Buish(.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe taught Home Economics and Child Care,\u201d Abrams said. \u201cI still see her often, because Carol is the Cornell Extension Agent Coordinator of the Youth Programs, which includes 4-H.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nine years ago, Mary was looking for a more challenging job than working at the Freund Box Factory and someone suggested she take the Civil Service Exam. She became an aid with the Fingerlakes Developmental Center, working in a group home situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne day, I took several of my clients from the Residence Home to a high school basketball game. I saw a familiar face and said hello even though I couldn\u2019t come up with a name.\u201d<\/p>\n
The following day, her boss at the Fingerlakes Developmental Center asked her how she enjoyed the basketball game.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt first I didn\u2019t make the tie in,\u201d Mary said. \u201cBut, the man at the basketball game was my former high school teacher, Dawson Raymos. His wife is my boss!\u201d<\/p>\n
During class work with the Palmyra Volunteer Ambulance 12 years ago, she was approached to join the corps, but she wanted to work in her home community, so she joined the Walworth Volunteer Ambulance. Daryl Hall was the Fire Chief at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love my job,\u201d Mary said. \u201cIn the Fire department office I handle all the paper work. I\u2019m Captain of the ALS (Ambulance Life Support), which means I have to make sure all our drugs are not expired and keep accurate records.\u00a0 I do tours of the station for scouts and other\u00a0 groups, as well as teach CPR and First Aid.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mary\u2019s many hours of classroom learning, training exercises and on-the-job experiences help her to be able to quickly evaluate what must be done when she goes out on a call. The crew must sometimes figure-out how to extricate a driver trapped in a car, how to get the gurney out of the upstairs bedroom of an older home, and assess an appropriate treatment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love my job,\u201d she said. \u201cEach call is unique and we work as a team to bring the best we can to the patient.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mary hopes to become a Paramedic by completing a full year of course work, but she\u2019s not sure when she\u2019ll be finished.<\/p>\n
The biggest change during the time Mary has lived here is the population explosion.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this is a positive thing,\u201d she said, \u201cbut, the services haven\u2019t been able to keep up with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
She cited the number of clients Social Services has placed in Walworth. Some of them don\u2019t have cars and there isn\u2019t any public transportation, so they call the ambulance for a ride into a doctor\u2019s visit. This ties up the ambulance for real medical emergencies.<\/p>\n
One of the things that Mary emphasizes to her 4-H members is to treat others as you would want to be treated. She certainly practices what she preaches!<\/p>\n
Thank you, Mary Abrams, you are a Walworthian with the accent on WORTH.<\/p>\n
2018 Up-Date: From time to time, Mary helps out with the Firemen\u2019s Chicken Barbecue, but, she\u2019s so busy, I haven\u2019t actually caught up to her to chat.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Walworthians A collection of telephone interviews published in the Wayne County STAR Newspaper and Wayne County MAIL Newspaper, 1994-209 by Kate Chamberlin Mary Abrams, Firefighter of the Year April 08, 1999 Mary Abrams is one of the people in our neighborhood. She is being honored as the 1999 Walworth Firefighter of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1310"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1311,"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions\/1311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}