DETROIT – Long before “first responder” became a household term, a pioneering group of Detroiters helped define what it meant.
In 1972, the city of Detroit founded its Emergency Medical Services unit, opening the door for returning military medics, African American men and, for the first time, women to serve in a formal EMS role.
This Black History Month, some of those early EMTs and paramedics are looking back on the work that became more calling than job.
John Robinson, a Navy veteran pictured in early EMS photos from the 1970s, was among the first to answer that call.
“I was very proud to have been in the first class,” Robinson said. He went on to serve Detroiters in that role for 15 years.
They were united by more than a desire to help others.
Many also shared in the struggles that came with integrating a new profession into a changing city workforce.
“I had fights along the way, but I persevered,” said Gail Clark, who joined Detroit EMS in 1974 under Mayor Coleman Young.
Young’s administration used affirmative action to open positions to women on the city’s EMS teams, a shift that was not always welcomed.
“There were instances where I was told, ‘You work for the fire department, but you are not a member of the fire department in my eyes,’” Clark recalled.
Some male colleagues, including fellow medic Danny Warren, had her back. But all said being Black at that time meant overcoming obstacles too.
“The eyes were really on us because we had females in the class, so we had to show that we could do the job and they had to show that they could do the job,” Warren said.
Among the trailblazers was Charles Corley, one of the first paramedics in Michigan.
Colleagues say he quickly became the person new hires were sent to for training.
“They called me the godfather,” Corley said as he laughed. “I told them I’ll take care of you one way or another.”
Seeing his old uniform now, he said, brings back memories of the people he was able to help and the weight of responding to emergencies across the city.
“The help that I was able to provide,” he said, pausing as he reflected.
Not everyone they treated survived.
That emotional toll led Preston West, a former Army Reserve medic, to develop a stress management program specifically for Detroit EMS.
“I developed a stress management program for the Emergency Medical Service because I knew they needed stress management dealing with things off the job and on the job,” West said.
He’s encouraged to see that focus on mental health endure.
“So much has changed, so much is still the same,” West said. “I look at these units and see the equipment they have now and I say to myself, if only we had this back then, what we could have done to help even more people.”
Even so, those early EMTs and paramedics know they made an impact.
Over decades of service, they responded to countless calls, saved lives and carved out a place for Black men and women in a field that did not always welcome them.
Their work — and the barriers they broke in Detroit’s first EMS units — lives on today in the generations of first responders who followed.