GOVAC HISTORY
Our charter members - June 1999
Our charter members - June 1974
We may have got our start on June 19th,1974 however the ground work was started
back in 1973. The Goshen Jaycee's led by Ed Garling, felt the need for a trained
emergency medical service in Goshen. Up to that time if you needed an ambulance, a
local funeral director brought the hearse & transported with a nurse from the hospital. It
wasn't uncommon to wait over a half hour for him to arrive. The Jaycee's' started the
idea but the people of Goshen supported it. On June 19th,1974, with a second hand rig &
33 people, we were in service!
Our first call was an MVA on June 28th, 1974. In over 30 years of service we have
traveled over 150,000 miles and answered over 15,000 calls. Our crew members are
made up of students, teachers, health care workers, truck drivers, business owners,
officer workers and firefighters to name a few. They all come together to answer the call
for help.
In recent years, GOVAC formed the first volunteer EMS Bike team in Orange County. We
have also been named Orange County BLS Agency of the Year. Other honors have been
bestowed upon 3 members, Bob Lemin, Pat Hugerth and Lisa Scheuermann, by being
honored as Orange County BLS Providers of the Year. Bob & Lisa were also honored as
Hudson Valley Regional EMS Council's BLS Provider of the Year.
On June 19,2004 we celebrated 30 years of service!  GOVAC members celebrated new
beginnings and said goodbye to an old and faithful friend.
Thanks to all who stopped by at our Park Place Bay on June 19th to help us celebrate!
Currently, GOVAC members are expected (Unless other arraignments have been made) to put in 30 hours a
month with 6 hours of that on the weekends. Members must be within 5 minutes of the bay when on call.

GOVAC member fall into 4 classifications,
ACTIVE, DRIVER ONLY, ASSOCIATE and SERVICE members.


ACTIVE MEMBERS: must be at least 16 year old. They must hold either an National Safety Council First Aid or
Red Cross card(at least 16 hours), New York State Certified First Responder or Emergency Medical Technician
card and a CPR card. Our current membership consist of EMT's, CPR and First aiders.
DRIVER ONLY: Must be at least 21 years old and have a clean drivers license. Most  Driver Onlys go on to get their First Aid or EMT
cards. We do require that Driver Onlys take CPR once they are members so , if needed, they will be an extra set of hands.

ASSOCIATE MEMBERS: Is someone who belongs to another emergency service agency, however wishes to volunteer with GOVAC.
This member must be a member in good standing at their home agency. They may be Active or Driver Only members. These
members need not put in a schedule or attend meetings and trainings (though they are encouraged to attend. ). However they must
either ride 50 hours or do at least 10 calls
a year and reapply annually.

SERVICE MEMBERS: who have been active riding members but now are not able to fulfill the requirements, yet they want to stay
active. Service members must keep all cards up to date. Although they may not ride much, they are still very active behind the
scenes.

JUNIOR MEMBERS: is our new group. We hope to give young people between 10 - 16 years old an introduction to EMS. We have had
such a great response to this. We'll keep you informed on it's events on our
GOVAC Junior's Page.
Do you live in the Goshen area? Do you think that you would like to be a member?
HERE'S THE APPLICATION!
You will need Adobe Reader to open this file. If you do not have it. Click the Adobe link and download it for free.
Complete it & send it back to us. Either by
EMAIL or snail-mail.
A member of the membership committee will get back to you as soon as we get it.
*
PLEASE only apply if you live in the Goshen area or can be 5 minutes from the bay while on call.
*
GOVAC meeting are held on Wednesday nights. Board meeting is 1st Wednesday. Training is on the 2nd Wednesday with the
General Membership meeting on the 3rd.
All meetings are open to the public.
1
CLICK HERE FOR
GOVAC'S FIRST
THIRTY YEARS
Check out our 30 year history.
This presentation was shown at our annual dinner to show how far
we have come in 30 years.
For a few of us it was a wonderful trip down memory lane.
Enjoy
This presentation was
created with Microsoft
Power Point.
If you do not have this
program you can download
Microsoft's Power Point
Viewer
GOVAC was part of  history.
For 24 hours we were
deployed to the World Trade
Center site. Here are our
pictures