Lt. Daniel K. Kehoe, (Ret.)
Ambulance service from the 1940s through the early 1970s in Suffield was largely supplied and operated by the Suffield Police Department, which would call in off-duty officers to bring the ambulance to a scene and transport the patient to the hospital.
Throughout those decades, calls requiring an ambulance happened only a few times a week, owing to the small-town population, and the sturdy constitution of local farmers who were likely to “rub dirt on it” or seek medical attention from the local doctor. The very concept of calling 911 for emergency services did not become a normality until the 1970s, with full Enhanced911 (E911) not finally implemented in Suffield until 1989.
The ambulance, in its earlier manifestation, was an old Cadillac-style ambulance which may have at one time doubled as a hearse. It was kept at the Suffield Police headquarters which for years was at the rear of Town Hall on Mountain Road. Early SVAA members reminisce about the “Blue Goose” or “the Old Cadillac” vehicle, which was replaced by the SVAA’s first flagship vehicle, a van-type ambulance in the late-1970s.
The SVAA’s first van-based box-style ambulance, “EM-1”, as the Horton ambulance was labeled and known on the police frequency, was housed first in the Main Fire Station on Mountain Road, then in 1980 in the Town Hall Annex building (built in 1976). The ambulance barely fit inside, and on a few occasions, the bay door or side of the opening was dented by a hasty outbound response or inattentive driver backing in.
The SVAA used the single bay at the rear of the building, also occupying a very small office adjacent to it. It had no bathroom or meeting room of its own, and only some wobbly shelves in the cramped bay for storing medical supplies. The SVAA shared the building with the Building Department in the front, and Parks and Recreation folks on the west side, both of whom kindly let us borrow their facilities as needed.
In February 1990, the SVAA took delivery of a second ambulance to the SVAA (labeled as “139-2” partly in reference to its CMED radio ID). It was donated by Ray and Ina Perrault largely out of appreciation for the way a crew had so kindly treated him and his wife on a medical call from their Suffield home. This second ambulance helped the SVAA meet its growing call volume, and lessening the need for mutual aid from surrounding towns for daily calls. But this donation presented a problem: there was only one vehicle bay in the Town Hall Annex.
For a short time, the older of the two ambulances was housed at the Suffield Fire Department Center Firehouse just up the hill, and used for second calls.
In 1993, renovations to the Annex building added a second bay, and the SVAA took over the entire building. The renovated Annex was the ambulance association’s home for the next 14 years until a brand new building on Bridge Street was completed, at which point usage of the Town Hall Annex building was returned to the Town of Suffield. In 2026, discussions are underway to demolish the now 50-year-old building and use the lot for a new main fire station.
The Suffield Observer recorded events surrounding the new ~8,800-square-foot headquarters. A land gift of about three acres on Bridge Street occurred around 2004 (tied to a nearby adult-housing development), and the town applied for a state Small Town Economic Assistance Program grant in 2005 to help fund the roughly $1.4 million project.
Groundbreaking for a new building was held in 2006, attended by Chief Guy Henry, representatives from town and state government, Bill Borchers, head of the building committee, Deputy Chief Lisa Shelanskas, Assistant Chief Sonny Osowiecki, and Board member Gordon Stagg.
The new home at 205 Bridge Street (the Zak Center) was dedicated in 2007 and provided four bays for ambulances and a paramedic “fly car”. An adjacent but separate maintenance building across the ramp offered three more bays (for vehicles such as an EMS golf cart for town events, a four-wheeler for offroad rescue, and other rescue tools.) Inside the building were full shower facilities for crews, a day room for waiting with kitchen and eating area, a complete training room with A/V, and even an exercise room and bunk rooms.
Inside, to support the SVAA’s equipment, there was a repair and maintenance room, and facilities for crews to do computer-based runsheets and offices and conference rooms for the officers. Finally, the center offered plenty of secure storage (for paramedic drugs that needed to be locked up) and oxygen supply rooms accessible to outside vendors without giving them access to the entire building.
The Zak Center’s backup generator came in handy during the freak late-October 2011 snowstorm, providing warm showers and heat for people affected by the week-long power outage, caused by heavy snow pulling down trees which still had their leaves.
The Zak Center building was so named thanks to a $250,000 gift of the family foundation of Mary Anne Zak and in memory of her late husband, Amiel Zak, who were both well-loved Suffield teachers. Individual donors contributed funds as well (such as Deputy Chief Lisa and husband John Shelanskas, who gave the lobby). Some of the computer equipment was donated and maintained by Bigfoot Labs, my computer company, an example of the many small donations throughout the building. In all, the Zak Center, which is still in use today, was proof that the SVAA had arrived as a mature, stable organization in town and a token of the townspeople’s longstanding support for the mission of the SVAA and their need for a proper home. Some volunteer services in surrounding towns had long since collapsed or were replaced by contracts with commercial ambulance services, but the SVAA continued to grow and invite out-of-towner EMTs who drove many miles to volunteer to serve in Suffield.
A separate maintenance and storage building was added with three bays on the west side of the parking lot in 2012-2013.
Old habits die hard—as many longtime members continued to call out on the radio that they were leaving or enroute to “the Annex”, the small 20 x 20 foot space from which the SVAA operated for more than 30 years.