Community Service Salute

Community Service Salute - Mac Rogers

Mac Rogers’ sixteen year old daughter, Elizabeth, started driving this year. It is likely that she hears about driver safety and danger issues from her dad more than any child ever did from any parent.

Mac is the Chief at Ray County Ambulance in Richmond where he and his staff and crews serve a 526 square mile area.

From his early days as a Boy Scout, Mac had a personal interest in helping others, initially earning his First Aid badge, then becoming a lifeguard, and then an Eagle Scout.
In 1975, Mac chose an EMS career path beginning as an EMT. He was trained at Trenton Junior College and began working for the local ambulance service.

“Those were the days when EMS people were thought of as the guys in white jackets who emptied bedpans when they weren’t hauling a person to the hospital in a modified hearse,” says Mac. “We’ve made a lot of progress since then.”

Two years into his new career, Mac decided to pursue a higher level of certification. Fortunately for him, new programs were just start¬ing to open for those who wanted to be paramedics. Mac was accepted to a two-year paramedic course at UMKC’s first paramedic program, one of three in the state at that time.

His training was completed at the UMKC School of Medicine and his clinical testing at Truman Medical Center.

“At the time, the TV show, Emergency, was popular,” says Mac. “These days the EMS industry has much better regulatory con¬trols around it and a more consistent quality of care.”

Mac recalls another new aspect of emergency health care back in the 70’s, air ambulance helicopters. This too was a new concept with uncertain paths of progress lying before it. But like Mac says, it grew to become a vital part of the system.

“I’ll always remember a cardiac call we had with LifeFlight in the late 1970’s out at Barry Woods which was just pasture land in those days,” Mac says. “Things worked differently then and they needed me to board the aircraft with the patient in order to continue CPR. So there I was, flying over Kansas City trying to save a guy’s life in the back of a helicopter in the middle of the night. It was quite an experience and one I’ll never forget.”

Later, Mac went on to complete a business management and relations degree at Mid-America Nazarene University. He became Chief of Ray County Ambulance in 2000. From that point, he has worked in conjunction with his district board of directors to take the service from a three-bay, two-room building to a new $1.5 million facility designed to serve the community with an Advanced Life Support (ALS) ambulance company.

Mac and company were able to achieve this significant growth by gaining the support of the community. New tax levies were issued and the progress has been quite evident to everyone in the community.

So now it’s been 34 years of EMS service for Mac. His daughters, Elizabeth (16) and Isabelle (10), get the safety drill often enough as Mac admits, some days it’s hard to let them leave the house having dealt with so many trauma scenes over the course of his career.

But he has also found a new hobby that he says is quite therapeutic for him – community theatre. For the last ten years, Mac has been a volunteer stage manager in the local Richmond community theater program.

His business management degree comes in quite handy for di¬recting the practical hands-on needs of the stage. In fact, he and another EMS colleague, also involved in community theatre, find the work quite refreshing as the people around them are generally smiling.

“People in the EMS profession are typically involved because they have a passion for it,” says Mac. “They’re not there to get rich, that’s for sure. But they do deal with very tough situations where people are suffering and sometimes die. It’s really nice to have something like community theatre as a second line of defense for your mind be¬cause you can actually use your skills and experience, but in scenarios that don’t impart life and death pressure on you.”

Over the years, Mac has ac¬tually been an “extra” in five mu¬sicals. And stage emergencies, even the ones that happen during performances, are always very fixable to Mac.

In theatre, they say the show must go on. In EMS, it is understood that the next scene call may mean the end of the show for someone, but not if Mac Rogers can help it.

Thank you Mac, for your dedicated service!

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