Click here for information on Jim Page’s memorial services and tributes.

I was startled when the phone rang at 10:45 Saturday night. It was someone I worked with a few years ago.

"How are you?"

"Not well..."

Denny Hare, a former staff member at JEMS communications, was going through his phone book, calling people who may not be in the inner circle. Jim Page died suddenly while swimming a couple of hours earlier. He was 68 years old.

Notifying people of a death of a friend is a tough job. I appreciate Denny's effort. I e-mailed the news to my circle of friends who knew Jim. Part of me was hoping it was a mistake.

Beth Adams, assistant professor of Health Sciences and former director of ALS continuing education at George Washington University, emailed back. "I thought Jim was one of those guys who'd live forever." So did I.

I have been a fan, a collaborator and a colleague of Chief Page. He is the father of fire department-based emergency medical services.

Page worked his way through school. When he started with the Monterey Park Fire Department in 1957, he was a 21 year old with a high school diploma. Monterey Park is a three-station city fire department operating within Los Angeles County. He moved to the varsity team when hired by Los Angeles County in 1959. By time he was promoted to battalion chief in 1971, he had a law degree and self-published his first book, "Effective Company Command." My introduction to Chief Page was reading that book in a 1972 fire science class.

I have listened to dozens of Page conference presentations since the mid 1980's. Sitting in a dark and cold convention center room, Page would sometimes share his most personal moments of frustration or crisis. Success is not a black-or-white linear path.

Page was a workaholic. He obtained an undergraduate and a law degree while progressing through L.A. County as a firefighter, engineer, chief's aide, inspector and captain. Like many firefighters, Page liked speed. He owned a 1966 Shelby GT-350 Mustang that was his commuter car. Page worked excessively, starting a law practice and working overtime as a field battalion chief, to the point that his first marriage ended in divorce.

His task to implement the paramedics within the existing squad companies in 1971 would lead to his premature departure from the county fire department in 1973. Page enthusiastically pushed the new program through as fast as possible. The fire chief did not share Page's enthusiasm or techniques. L.A. County firefighters in 1971 had CPR and Advanced First Aid cards.

At a social gathering, the fire chief told Page that it seemed every problem he encountered involved Page. Shortly thereafter, the chief transferred Page to an assignment in Apparatus.

Page resigned from L.A. County at age 37 to take a newly created position as the state director of EMS in North Carolina. Page was in a statewide firefighter retirement system in California. With two years in Monterey Park and 14 years in L.A. County, he did not have enough time in the system to draw a pension.

Just like the L.A. County paramedic squad project, Page created a statewide EMS system from scratch. Some of Page's methods created issues with his boss. The boss fired Page in 1976. The final crisis was Page prohibiting the practice of reading the state EMT written exam to illiterate candidates.

He moved on to be the executive director of the ACT Foundation. ACT Foundation was an advocacy group for out-of-hospital advanced coronary care. The foundation worked as designed. Page was proud of its accomplishments. During this time, Page became a major player in the embryonic world of EMS organizations, attending their annual meetings and conferences. This started 28 years of public speaking, with more than 800 speeches at the time of his death. That averages out to 2.5 speeches every month.

My first face-to-face with Page was when he was a keynote speaker at the Fairfax County (Va.) Cardiac Care Technician Association dinner in 1979.

Page bought the slim assets of "Paramedics International" magazine and created the Journal of Emergency Medical Services, "JEMS" in 1980. Building the magazine created both financial and editorial challenges. He ghostwrote many of the articles in the early issues under a variety of pseudonyms.

Starting the EMS Today conference in 1982 was also a financial challenge. Page struggled to keep the magazine and the conference running in the face of significant financial losses.

He moved back to California and resumed his fire service career by becoming the Carlsbad fire chief in 1984. He returned to his fire service roots by becoming Monterey Park's fire chief in 1986. He was disappointed when his application to be the Los Angeles County fire chief did not make it to the final group of candidates.

He told me returning to the fire department was to get his pension from the state system. I think he still had a need for speed. His Monterey Park chief's car was a 1987 Pontiac Bonneville SSEi, the supercharged and completely decked-out model. I think it was fire-engine red.

In order to work as a fire chief, Page needed to hire additional staff at JEMS to cover the obligations he could not handle while working as a chief. His tenure as the Monterey Park fire chief seemed bittersweet.

Page's 1989 decision to retire from Monterey Park was after an internal article making fun of one of the elected officials made the newspaper. Page suffers municipal fools poorly. Reflecting on this action years later, Page speculated that he knew better, but maybe this is how he creates a situation requiring action. He had accrued enough service time to get his state firefighter's pension.

Returning to full-time work at JEMS Communications, the company created new publications and conferences. Page was not afraid to experiment.

I went from fan to collaborator in the mid-1990s when I was working on the third edition of the IFSTA Company Officer book. I wanted to use some of his passages from "Effective Company Command." This lead to dozens of conversations about company officer issues, leading to my writing 48 columns for Fire Insider and Fire-Rescue Magazine and making joint presentations with Page for the IAFC and Company Officer Development Experience.

Page, still needing speed, created a street rod that had the outward
appearance of LA County Rescue 11, a 1947 Ford panel truck that he drove as a new county firefighter. His rod hit the street in 1995.

In the late 1990's Page drove Rescue 11 across the county, visiting many fire stations (in 38 states) and continuing his extensive speaking schedule. Like almost every adventure, he wrote about his experiences for JEMS communications.

With the new millennium, Jane Page bought her husband a present of a session at the Richard Petty Driving Experience. Page was at least 20 years older than the other students were. He greatly enjoyed driving a NASCAR stock car around the high banks at speed.

Page told me that when he turned 65 he wanted to spend more time enjoying life. He figured he had one more decade to do what he wanted, while he still could enjoy it.

He became publisher emeritus of JEMS Communications in December 2001 and
started to wind down his workload at Page, Wolfberg and Wirth. PWW
http://www.pwwemslaw.com/ is a national EMS, ambulance and medical transportation law firm.

This did not slow down his writing or speaking schedule. He estimated he traveled 3 million miles since embarking on this journey. When he told this to his wife, she burst into tears. This last year he included her on a tour of the 100 best small towns in America. He was driving a new Freightliner mobile home. I wonder if it had a Jake Brake?

Page still had a need for speed. In the September 2004 issue of Fire-Rescue Magazine, his "Burning Issues" column described his experience of becoming a reserve California Highway Patrol officer in 2002. There is a picture of him, in uniform, next to a CHP Crown Victoria. The CHP cruisers are unlike any other cop car in the nation. CHP extensively modifies the cars to provide better and safer performance. I bet he had a blast responding Code 3.

I planned to meet with Jim during the National Association of EMS Educators conference in early September. I wanted to see if he still was interested in teaching an online course for GWU EMS Management.

Or, if he would permit us to create a "History of EMS" class from his writings. The second edition of the "History of EMS" video just came out on DVD, and he reprinted the manuscript from his 1979 book "The Paramedics" at the JEMS communications Web site. It would be the foundation of a fantastic class.

Assistant Professor Paul Maniscalco(www.homelandsecurity.gwu.edu/dhs/home.html ) observes the changing of the guard of EMS leaders:

"This has been a tough 24 months for EMS as a profession. While I am sure that there are other EMS pioneers that have passed on that I can't recall at this writing, during this time frame we've lost the likes of Judson H. Fuller, James B. Gargan, Leo R. Schwartz, Nancy Caroline MD, Peter Safar MD and now Jim Page. The collective loss creates a void that will impact EMS for a long time."

IAFC Executive Director Garry Briese first met Page three decades ago, when Briese was executive director of the Florida chapter of the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons and Page was with ACT. This past April, Briese received the James O. Page award at IAFC Fire-Rescue Med. In his acceptance speech, Briese challenged the fire service to take control of their EMS destiny. Losing Page makes this message even more important.

Michael Ward is assistant professor of Emergency Medicine at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He retired as the acting EMS Division administrator for Fairfax County (Va.) Fire and Rescue Department.