The Grace Cottage ambulance crew has again received high praise for going above and beyond the call of duty. In the words of Sherry Maher, George Maher's daughter, this is what happened:

"My dad was battling advanced cancer when he came to stay with us this winter. One January night, he needed treatment at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. The hospice nurse called an ambulance from Bellows Falls to take him from my home in Athens to BMH. On the way, that ambulance broke down on Route 30 in Newfane. A call for help went out and Mark Onyon and John Turechek soon arrived in Grace Cottage's ambulance. In the middle of Route 30 they expertly transferred Dad to their new ambulance and took us to BMH where they waited until my dad was done and took us back to Athens. They were wonderful with Dad and turned what could have been a disaster into a great little adventure story for Dad's friends back home. You see, Dad had been an active volunteer fireman for 47 years.

Soon we realized that Dad wanted to go back to Connecticut before he died, so we called Grace Cottage for the transport from Vermont to the hospice. But there was a twist: his dying wish was to visit HIS firehouse in Prospect, Connecticut one more time. Mark Onyon said, "'No problem!' John Turechek and Carol Haskins picked us up in the now-familiar Grace Cottage ambulance, and we drove to Prospect, where about 25 firefighter friends of Dad's were waiting to welcome him. Dad was too weak to get off the stretcher, but two firemen were designated as his escorts and they wheeled him all around the firehouse through every door and by every truck, including the 1915 American LaFrance ladder truck he had proudly maintained for many years. John and Carol then helped us to honor one last wish…to visit the house he and my mother built in 1951, where my brother and I grew up.

That was my dad's last lucid day; he died three days later. We miss him so very much but we will always be grateful to Grace Cottage for helping us to grant his last wishes: one last visit to his beloved firehouse and to the home he built. And I know that the volunteer firefighters of Prospect greatly appreciated with the Grace Cottage ambulance service did that day, and they, too, made a generous donation to Grace Cottage!"