The year was 1964 when a group of men and one woman banded together to take matters into their own hands and make certain people in the Albemarle region in need of emergency assistance would not go unaided. This group of volunteers was known as the Pasquotank County Rescue Squad and this is their story.

Up until the spring of 1964 someone in need of emergency assistance and transport to a hospital relied on funeral homes to carry them. That practice stopped, however, leaving Pasquotank, Camden, Currituck, Perquimans and Chowan Counties unaided by emergency help.

Photo courtesy Ann Twiford (ENLARGE)

Members of the area's first rescue squad gather around their ambulance for a photo. The squad was an all-volunteer outfit that offered their services 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Pictured are (left, from front to back) M.B. 'Teeny' Jennings, Henry Burgess, Roy Griggs, Charles Wright, Delayne Scaff. (Right from back to front) Horace Ames, Eugene Hassell, Thomas Chappell, Harold Riddick, Thomas Sawyer, Lee Gupton.

According to Marvin Twiford, a man who has helped gather the artifacts and history of this group, one man with a towing service in Currituck County was willing to aid victims of car wrecks and the like, but only if they were white.

Twiford says one man, M.B. "Teeny" Jennings, wouldn't stand for it. Twiford, who eventually married Jennings' widow Ann Twiford, says Jennings and a state trooper, Jim Bradley, got together to form the rescue squad that would serve the area until the mid-1970s when government officials created a paid rescue service.

"We were sitting in a restaurant in Windsor one night, my husband and I, and the Windsor Rescue Squad went by and answered a call and we talked about it and my husband went back and said 'Why can't we do something like that?' He talked to Jim Bradley and they decided they would try," recalls Ann Twiford.

Twiford would become the squad's sole dispatcher. She would be, according to squad member Lindsey Duncan, 73, "the backbone" of the operation.

"I did my part but I wasn't the backbone," says Ann Twiford of her role.

However Ann Twiford saw her role, she was a dedicated member of the squad, carrying the dispatch phone with her to work each day. She was willing to be on call, just as her husband Teeny Jennings was, 24 hours, seven days a week.

Jennings was a man possessed with a mission to care for people in need of emergency aid. Ann Twiford says he and Bradley worked for a year and a half before operations would begin in earnest. Along with men like Eugene Hassell and Thomas Chappell, they would form the beginnings of a squad that would rely solely on volunteer members and donations from a supportive public.

But to get started, the group had to get a building, a vehicle and phone service.

At first the men would use a "meat truck" for an ambulance but they realized they would need a state-of-the-art ambulance to handle the amount of calls they would receive. Marvin Twiford says one of the admirable things about Jennings and the rest of the squad was their willingness to take matters into their own hands. If they needed something, they would raise money for it, like the ambulance they would eventually purchase.

Fundraisers ran the gamut from door-to-door soliciting to concerts featuring people like Loretta Lynn.

Country music superstar Lynn sang to an audience at Sheep-Harney Elementary auditorium, recalls Marvin Twiford. And admission to the show was simply anything you could donate at the door.

The practical, day-to-day goal of the squad was simple: These men would respond to emergency calls, provide first-responder medical aid to victims of accidents and the like, and transport them as quickly and safely as possible.

Marvin Twiford says Teeny Jennings was perhaps the most dedicated of the group. Ann Twiford says her late husband even lost a job because he chose to take an emergency call rather than attend to his job.

"This was first," says Ann Twiford. "The rescue squad came first."

So caring for people was Teeny Jennings' priority and passion.

Marvin Twiford tells a story about Jennings' earnest dedication that is accompanied by well-kept documentation thanks to Ann Twiford. The document is a letter from the governor of Virginia giving the rescue squad permission to run through the state's toll roads without paying when there was an emergency.

Jennings, says Twiford, had received a call that a young boy had fallen into the blades of his father's corn picker. Jennings responded to the call with the group's ambulance and knew that the only way he might help save this boy's life was to drive fast, without stopping, to a hospital in nearby Virginia, and that meant running through the toll booth without paying.

Jennings got the boy to the hospital, although he would die of his devastating injuries later. And he was stopped on the way home by local law enforcement, which eventually led to an arrangement with the State of Virginia to allow the rescue squad free access in the event of an emergency.

The men of the squad would come and go over the years, counting up to about 13 volunteers at any given time, says Lindsey Duncan. Each of them was willing to dedicate their time to this service, even to the dismay of family and employers.

Duncan says he was 43-years old when he signed on with the squad. He would eventually become sergeant to Jennings' captain and was just as dedicated as any man to the cause.

"They had to vote you in," he recalls. "I had to go through training once a week."

Dr. William Crutchley was the group's medical advisor and he would also assist with training at the local hospital. And their training was intensive, says Duncan, leaving each man with solid knowledge roughly equivalent to today's emergency medical technicians.

"The doctor had said (Teeny Jennings) was the only man he knew that was as close to a doctor as you could get without a degree," Duncan says of Jennings' medical abilities.

Jennings was also a respected leader. He led the men by example and never seemed to tire of his role as captain and squad member.

"Teeny Jennings was a fair man but he was a tough man," says Duncan.

Duncan says while Jennings stayed with the squad until the end, the arduous, sometimes traumatic work was not for everyone. He says many men just couldn't handle the intensity of the emergency calls and would resign shortly after coping with a gruesome tragedy.

"My most memorable call was in Camden," recalls Duncan. "A man was changing a truck tire and the rim blew off and cut his head open like a water melon. I held his brain in my lap on the way to the hospital."

The man would eventually die, Duncan recalls, however that incident didn't turn him away from the work at hand. Rather, it was any tragedy dealing with children that would take its toll on Duncan.

"It became too much to see children hurt," he says.

The work these men, and woman, did made a difference in the lives of people living in the Albemarle. Where they saw a need, they gave freely of themselves to provide a solution. They were heroes, without a doubt.

"I just want people to know that these guys are the ones that started it and gave of themselves," says Ann Twiford.