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Dr. Stanley Zydlo, 'father' of paramedic service in suburbs and country, dies

Dr. Stanley M. Zydlo, who in the face of skepticism introduced the idea of training firefighters to be paramedics in the early 1970s — a system now credited with saving untold lives — died Wednesday night at age 81.

The Inverness doctor, considered the “father” of paramedic service in the Northwest suburbs and founder of the first emergency medical system in Illinois, died at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights.

“He was a saint, quite frankly,” Schaumburg Mayor Al Larson said Thursday.

“He was a pioneer. People told him, 'You can't expect a firefighter to do that, you can't depend on it.' He said, 'Nonsense!' He proved the naysayers wrong.”

Zydlo often credited the death of his own brother, who had a heart attack six blocks from a hospital, as his personal motivation. He looked at the mobile intensive care units for cardiac patients that were starting to be used and thought the idea could be expanded to other types of emergency care.

In 1972, he organized a meeting of Northwest suburban fire departments to propose the idea of training and certifying firefighters in emergency medicine.

Zydlo knew that people who got treatment within six minutes of having a heart attack had a better rate of survival.

“After that, it's not resuscitation; it's resurrection,” he would say.

From that first meeting, Zydlo created the paramedic program in Illinois, which was the first in the country and has become one of the largest Emergency Medical Services systems in the Midwest.

Today, it has 25 member agencies in Cook and Lake counties and 1,000 trained emergency medical technicians and paramedics. Last year, they responded to more than 70,000 calls.

“It was amazing how common, ordinary people were willing to take on medical knowledge — and do it,” Zydlo said in a 2008 interview with the Daily Herald. “And that was very pleasing to me, in light of all the resistance it caused.”

Before 1972, people needing medical treatment were often picked up by hearses run out of area funeral homes and taken to the closest hospitals.

Residents take paramedic service for granted today, but in 1972 Zydlo was plowing new ground. Who would deliver the service? Private companies? Police or fire departments? A separate government agency?

“He came to the fire department, and the chiefs at the time bought into his vision,” said Palatine Fire Chief Scott Andersen. “It absolutely revolutionized the service.”

In his 1979 book, “The Paramedics,” author James Page credits Zydlo and Janet Schwettman, a Huntley activist who died in 2010, with being the catalysts for paramedic service in Illinois. He taught, while she lobbied, often laying their case on deaf ears.

Larson remembers those days.

“Change is difficult, and he was talking about the revamping of a system that had been in place for years and years and years. He was pushing the limits of his profession,” Larson said.

Dr. John Ortinau, the EMS medical director at Northwest Community Hospital, said Zydlo initially met resistance from medical colleagues who thought firefighters could not be trained to provide complicated medical care.

Zydlo persisted, teaching many of the paramedics' classes himself and ultimately overseeing all the medical delivery by member agencies and municipalities. He was medical director of Northwest Community's EMS system, and its emergency department, for nearly 25 years.

“He was a force for good that changed the world of EMS,” said Connie Mattera, the EMS system coordinator at Northwest Community. “His passing marks the end of an era.”

After he left the Air Force in 1963, Zydlo went to Wabash, Indiana, where he had a small doctor's office. Developing an interest in emergency medicine, he moved to Chicago in 1969 and joined the emergency room staff at Northwest Community Hospital.

In the classroom, Zydlo could be intimidating, telling would-be paramedics never to second-guess themselves, never to hesitate, said Palatine Rural Fire Protection District Fire Chief Hank Clemmensen, who trained under him in the 1970s.

“He knew so much, but he would keep asking you questions till you missed one,” Clemmensen said. “He always would say, 'Are you sure?' And then of course you start questioning yourself.”

Clemmensen's first lesson in the emergency room came when Zydlo grabbed him to help treat a man whose injured arm was in danger of being amputated. They ended up saving it.

“He knew that to teach, you had to get your hands dirty,” Clemmensen said.

By the 1990s, Zydlo was teaching specific topics. Andersen, who studied behavioral emergencies under Zydlo in 1992, said the veteran brought a military regimen to his classes.

“He was a man with an incredible vision and stopped at absolutely nothing until that vision was realized,” Andersen said.

As recently as March, Zydlo attended a breakfast of retirees from the Palatine Fire Department. Earlier this year, he also went to monthly lunches with Northwest suburban chiefs.

“He was an incredibly kind, caring, driven, focused man who cared as much about his paramedics as he did his patients,” Andersen said. “He was a special guy.”

Clemmensen equated his death to losing a father. Zydlo lived in the Inverness-based district, which will devote a special meeting to planning a tribute.

“Hopefully, we'll be able to do what the fire service does, and that's stand behind our people,” Clemmensen said. “And he is definitely one of us.”

In 1997, at a 25th-anniversary event, Zydlo recalled a time when accident victims were dragged out of the wreckage with little regard for neck and spinal injuries.

“(The procedure) killed more people than it saved,” he told the more than 1,100 paramedics at the dinner. So he drew up new procedures on removing accident victims safely and taught paramedics to administer intravenous fluids and drugs, and other lifesaving measures.

Prospect Heights Deputy Chief Drew Smith, also director of the Fire Academy in Glenview, trained as a paramedic under Zydlo in 1981.

“He was a great teacher and communicator,” Smith says, “and very passionate about the need for paramedics and a systems approach.”

One of the firefighters in the current class is Zydlo's son, Matt, a trained paramedic who has been hired by the Schiller Park Fire Department, a member of Northwest Community's EMS system. Matt Zydlo will graduate June 12.

• Daily Herald staff writers Katlyn Smith and Eric Peterson contributed to this report.

Dr. Stanley Zydlo at Northwest Community Hospital. Daily Herald file photo
Dr. Stanley Zydlo in the emergency room at Northwest Community Hospital. Daily Herald file photo, 1991
In 1986, Zydlo displays the original briefcase cardiac monitor with which he started the paramedic program. Daily Herald file photo
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