DECATUR - Going into labor with her first child, Sue Burkham had to dispatch an ambulance from her own company to take her to the hospital.
"My husband came and had to drive me in the ambulance to the hospital," the now 73-year-old Burkham remembers.
Not too many women in the 1960s were on triple duty of raising their children, being a wife and helping run a business.
But she did it.
She brought new life into the world, saved lives and transported people to hospitals alongside her husband, Robert "Bob" Burkham, who started Decatur Ambulance Service.
Decatur's first ambulance service first opened its doors on March 1, 1959.
The family-run business continues growing under the reigns of the next generation, sons David and Mike.
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Sue Burkham graduated from a three-year program at Decatur Macon County Hospital as a registered nurse.
She was working in the emergency room of the hospital, when another nurse, Lois Schenk, introduced her to a young man named Bob Burkham, who came rushing through with a patient on a stretcher.
That hospital connection later led them to cross the threshold of matrimony in April 1958.
At the time, Bob Burkham was working for Dawson & Wikoff Funeral Home.
"He always worked at a funeral home when he was a young teenager. His first job was washing cars for Moran & Goebel Funeral Home," Burkham said about her husband. "He went into the service during the Korean War. When he got out of the service in 1955, he approached the funeral homes about selling out their ambulance service. But they told him he was too young."
Funeral homes in those early days used their hearses to haul caskets. But they also served as ambulances. Back then, the ambulances consisted of a cot, oxygen bottle, first aid kit and splints, Burkham said.
As times changed, so did the funeral homes, which became inundated by the expense and time it took transporting people to hospitals.
Burkham said her husband decided to go to Millikin University to get a business degree. He again returned to the local funeral homes with a proposal to start a private ambulance service in 1958.
That first day Decatur Ambulance Service opened, Burkham was answering phones and dispatching from their one-bedroom apartment, located at 600 W. Macon St. The ambulance drivers for the company were stationed at the funeral homes ready to drive the LaSalles and Cadillac hearses.
It turned into a three-month battle with the city before the Burkhams were allowed to get the 400 block of West Wood Street rezoned for commercial use and set up their ambulance headquarters.
"We ran two ambulances a day and had one on reserve. Ten calls a day was a big day for us," Burkham said. "And Bob was practically out on most of the calls."
A small number in comparison today, where paramedics with Decatur Ambulance Service go out on 50 to 60 calls a day.
Of course, in the 1950s and '60s, Burkham admitted you wouldn't have seen a woman working in an ambulance. So she worked in the office doing dispatching, billing and bookkeeping until a paramedic program evolved at St. Mary's Hospital in the 1970s.
She took the paramedic exam and gained a new role as a registered nurse/paramedic to be able to ride in the back of an ambulance and take care of the patient. She said she was one of the first pioneer women in the state to get her license to become what was known as a field RN.
By the 1980s, business was booming as the ambulance service was transferring patients to the new burn unit at Springfield's Memorial Hospital and the new cardiac/trauma unit at St. John's Hospital.
Five decades later, Decatur Ambulance Service is still capitalizing the market of having substations set up: three in Decatur, one in Forsyth and Mount Zion and more in Pana and Shelbyville.
David Burkham and his brother, Mike, took over the business when their father became ill in 1994. Bob Burkham died in October 1998.
"Anymore, this industry is a milestone, and there have been a lot of failed services that didn't make it," David Burkham said.
Mike Krause joined the brothers in running Decatur Ambulance Service.
"We all graduated from Millikin and had our different strengths," Krause said. "My strength is in accounting and handling the financial side of the business. David's is in management, and Mike's strength is in engineering. But I think it's great to be part of something successful and a legacy that was handed down to us.
"They (Bob and Sue) sacrificed a lot in putting personal time into this business."
Although Sue Burkham is semi-retired from the business, she remains modest about all her husband accomplished in providing a service in the community.
She said she will never forget going on the call during the Norfolk & Western railyard explosion in July 1974, when eight critically-burned men had to be transported to the hospital in Springfield.
She said it was exhilarating times when Decatur Ambulance Service found itself breaking in the latest in medical technology, like using streptokinase, a clot-dissolving medication used during heart attacks and pulmonary embolism that is injected into a patient going into cardiac arrest.
"When we got the patient to the hospital and were in the cath lab, we could see where the artery opened up and was profusing blood and had saved the heart muscle. It was a very exciting thing to see and be a part of that. Now, they are doing completely different procedures," she said.
And Burkham reflected on arriving at a home where a woman had gone into cardiac arrest. She hooked the woman to a cardiac monitor but then her heart beat began to quiver and fade.
Burkham gave the woman a blow to the chest before using the defibulator and the heart started beating again. She said several firefighters stood around watching in awe what had happened.
After the woman was taken to the hospital and unloaded off the cart in the emergency room, Burkham said she looked at her and said, "I know you saved my life; thank you."
Other local milestones
35 years
Bainbridge, Gee, Milanksi & Associates, 1670 S. Taylorville Road, 423-8600. Engineering firm.
Joseph W. Darflinger, 136 W. Washington St. 422-2214. Law firm.
10 years
MCK Technology, 1353 E. Mound Road Suite 300, 875-2655. Computer services.
Victory Pharmacy of Decatur, 163 N. Water St. 428-4000.
5 years
Performance Welding, Maroa, 674-3628. Portable welding and machine moving service.–
Griffin Tower Connection Inc., 253 Western Ave., 963-2140.–Communications tower and antenna service.––––––
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All addresses are Decatur unless otherwise noted.
Is your Macon County business celebrating a milestone? Let us know. Send your information by e-mail to sperry@herald-review.com, by fax to 421-7965 or by mail to Milestones, c/o Scott Perry, Box 311, Decatur, IL 62521
