Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com about Dr Stanley Zydlo
Dr. Stanley M. Zydlo, the longtime head of emergency medical services at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights, was the driving force behind creating the first multicommunity system of paramedics and emergency medical technicians in the country.
“Stan was a man way ahead of his time. He saw the potential to save lives, and he made it a reality,” said former Palatine Mayor Rita Mullins. “He has saved so many lives with his idea and his tenacity to carry out that idea.”
Zydlo, 81, died of cardiac arrest June 3 at Northwest Community Hospital … he had been in failing health, his wife said.
Born and raised on Chicago’s West Side, Zydlo was the son of Stanley Zydlo Sr., who owned a tavern and later was the 26th Ward alderman for 15 years.
After earning a medical degree from Loyola University, Zydlo served as a flight surgeon in the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command during the Cuban Missile Crisis. His role was to assess the physical and psychological fitness of pilots and crew members to fly planes with nuclear weapons between a base in Arkansas and the Soviet Union. As part of that work, he regularly flew on those missions.
Zydlo started a medical practice in Wabash, Ind., upon leaving the Air Force in 1963. He moved to Chicago in 1969 for a job in the emergency room at Northwest Community Hospital. Zydlo soon encountered a troubling phenomenon. Ambulance service employees would collect trauma victims or patients in pain, but those employees had no medical training and never undertook any lifesaving measures en route.
Larry Pairitz, Mount Prospect’s fire chief from 1970 until 1986, got to know Zydlo when he asked him to lead an EMT class for his firefighters. Gradually, Pairitz expanded the class to include neighboring fire departments.
From there, Zydlo was sold on the idea of training fire department personnel in lifesaving measures. He banded together with Pairitz and an activist named Janet Schwettman to establish statewide requirements for fire departments to provide paramedic services.
While fire departments largely embraced the concept, medical colleagues were initially leery of the notion that firefighters could learn advanced lifesaving measures.
“There was some strident opposition among doctors,” Zydlo told the Tribune in 1994. “But I adopted my own motto, which was: ‘Just try to stop us from helping people.'”
During the process of lobbying state leaders on the benefits of having paramedics on staff at local fire departments, Zydlo taught firefighters the lifesaving measures.
In 1994, Zydlo reflected on the division between doctors and firefighters.
“People shouldn’t die because someone doesn’t have the letters ‘M.D.’ on their collar, and that’s what was happening in the northwest suburbs and across the country,” he told the Tribune. “If you don’t survive the ride to the emergency room, the best doctor in the world and all the advanced medical technology can’t help you. That’s just common sense.
Gov. Richard Ogilvie signed a bill authorizing the paramedic system in August 1972. The following month, Northwest Community Hospital launched its Mobile Intensive Care System, and several months later, nine towns — Arlington Heights, Mount Prospect, Buffalo Grove, Lake Zurich, Wheeling, Schaumburg, Hoffman Estates, Palatine and Rolling Meadows — went online as part of a multicommunity Emergency Medical Services System. Today, the consortium counts 25 member agencies — 22 area fire departments and three private ambulance services.
For years after the EMS system was created, Zydlo remained the project medical director, and he continued to train area paramedics and EMTs. He also was a personal beneficiary of the system he helped to create, when he suffered a heart attack at his home in 1978.
“My pulse was very weak, and I had almost no blood pressure,” he told the Tribune in 1994. “I managed to make it to the phone, though. Those paramedics saved my life. There’s no doubt in my mind.”
A Palatine fire station was named for Zydlo in November 1997.
