TOWNSHEND BUSINESS ASSOCIATION
HONORS HOSPITAL'S MARK ONYON

The Townshend Business Association recently honored Mark Onyon, Director of Grace Cottage's EMS training center, with its President's Award for 2001. The following remarks were made by Steve McConnel at the awards banquet:

"Each year, the Townshend Business Association's President's Award is given to someone in our community who has made a significant contribution to our town....This year, we are honoring a man who has made all our lives a lot safer; a man who has left his trade as a master electrician to, instead, put his own safety at risk to protect us. And he is now very busy training hundreds of people throughout the West River Valley about how they, too, can save the lives of our citizens.

A little over a year ago, Grace Cottage Hospital opened an on-site Emergency Medical Services Training Center. Its purpose was to increase the number of trained and certified ambulance volunteers in this area. It has grown to much more than that.

During the last year, 787 students have been taught, including 130 EMS students, 188 CPR students and 469 participants in continuing education classes or emergency awareness and first aid programs at area elementary, middle and high schools. In addition, Grace Cottage employees have received training in the use of defibrillators and fire and evacuation techniques.

Mark did all this, while rushing to most of the 329 ambulance calls to which Grace Cottage's ambulance responded last year, in ten area towns.

This year's award goes to the Director of the EMS Training Center for his single-handed excellence as a teacher, an EMT, and a true life-saver."

Mark Onyon, EMS Training Center director, has been visiting local schools to conduct CPR and First Aid classes. These notes were among the thank-you letters received in December from the Dover School 6th grade. ~~~~~~~~ Mark, Thank you for coming and teaching us CPR lessons. You really taught me a lot. You are very brave to do that for a job because I would like to save people's lives, but I wouldn't want to kill anyone when I was trying to save them! That would just make me feel sad. But you are very good at it. Thanks for all the lessons - they helped me learn more. Sincerely, Ann Dear Mark, Thank you for coming into our class to teach us about CPR and how to do CPR. I really enjoyed learning CPR and I lllearned a lot. Now if something happens to someone I can ggive them CPR and save them. Sincerely, Jared