In the early 1970s, when the idea of the fire department getting an ambulance first surfaced, Fire Chief Joe Klauk asked the Homewood Chamber of Commerce to partner on a fundraising project.
Note: This story is the second of three on the 50th anniversary of Homewood EMS.
Everyone thought it was a wonderful idea and got behind the effort led by chamber member Fred Sierzega, who co-owned Suzie’s Hallmark with his wife.
“I’d only opened the store about 18 months before that,” he remembered, but when the chamber’s president, Bill Lassen Sr., asked if he’d take on the job as chair of the fund drive, Sierzega said yes.
to raise money for Homewood’s first ambulance back in the mid-1970s.
(Eric Crump/H-F Chronicle)
The Sierzegas divided up Homewood into sections. Each neighborhood section had five or six volunteer organizations agreeing to ring doorbells to solicit donations. In all, 58 organizations, churches and businesses were part of the fundraiser.
St. Paul Community Church organized one section, the Junior Woman’s Club another, and H-F Kiwanis Club another. Community Bank in Homewood solicited other businesses in town, and Chief Klauk handled the fire department and its auxiliary, the cadet fireman program and the police department.
“We did a lot of preparation to get this going, and everybody was very excited about it,” Sierzega recalled.
The fundraising started mid-year in 1974. By November, when the fire department got its first ambulance, the committee had raised about $41,000. That covered the $20,000 cost for the ambulance and another $21,000 for the equipment.
Homewood became the second community in Illinois to have an Emergency Medical Service with an ambulance as part of the fire department.
In 1979, the fire department, now with a full-time staff, needed a second ambulance. Sierzega headed up that fund drive, too. Donations from 1974 through 1979 totaled approximately $50,000.
Sierzega’s numbers show between 1974 and 1996, the community donated around $500,000 to establish and keep the paramedic program running.
Today it is fully funded by the village. The costs for ambulance service are generally reimbursed through insurance. Last year the village got $3 million in insurance payments, according to Fire Chief Bob Grabowski.
The newest ambulance was ordered three years ago at a cost of $380,000. The village is still waiting for delivery, Grabowski said.
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