People, places and memory
From a used LaSalle to a rural rescue service
Institutional history
Tabernacle’s rescue squad began with a secondhand ambulance and developed equipment for the difficulties of a rural service area.
The first vehicles and a home of their own
The squad’s official history distinguishes organizing in 1952 from beginning ambulance operations in 1953. Its first vehicle was a used 1939 LaSalle housed with fire apparatus on Hawkins Road. A separate two-bay building followed in 1957.
Reaching people beyond ordinary roads
During the 1970s the service acquired a former military Dodge ambulance for off-road work. Communications evolved from party-line telephones and a siren to pagers and CB radios. These changes address two basic rescue problems in a dispersed community: summoning a crew and reaching the patient.
Sources and research limits
The history records the Tabernacle Rescue Squad name in 1988 and the first paid employees in January 2025. These dated statements are more useful than the same site’s undated “all volunteer” wording. This is an institutional retrospective, and its celebratory descriptions are not treated as independent measures of response quality or present staffing.