THERMOPOLIS — After 80 years of service to Hot Springs County, Wyoming, the Mortimore Ambulance Service is going off duty.
The family will focus on its funeral home instead, and Cody Regional Health will be the new emergency medical service for the area.
The Mortimore family has been serving the community with emergency medical service since just after World War II when patriarch Max Mortimore took over the funeral home in Thermopolis.
By 1949, Max had built the current funeral home on Arapaho Street and then, out of necessity, began an ambulance service.
Max’s son Clark, grandsons Mike and Mark, and great-grandson Brennon have all worked as emergency staff over the past eight decades.
Clark Mortimore oversaw a transport to a plane and made sure his patients were well taken care of. Many times, it was actually faster to drive the patient to Casper or Billings than take a flight because of delays and other logistics. (Mortimore family photo) 
Max Mortimore was the founder of the Mortimore Funeral Home after World War II. When patients needed emergency trips to the local Thermopolis hospital, he was asked to transport them in the back of his hearse, which was the only vehicle big enough to fit a cot and attendant. (Mortimore family photo) 
The Mortimore Ambulance Service has served Thermopolis and Hot Springs County for nearly 80 years. (Mortimore family photo) 
When Clark Mortimore expanded their services to include the remote Grass Creek oil field, he bought a third ambulance which he gave a paint job to that included the bucking horse medical logo he had designed and its new call sign, MS-195. (Mortimore family photo) 
When Clark Mortimore expanded their services to include the remote Grass Creek oil field, he bought a third ambulance which he gave a paint job to that included the bucking horse medical logo he had designed and its new call sign, MS-195. (Mortimore family photo) 
When Clark Mortimore expanded their services to include the remote Grass Creek oil field, he bought a third ambulance which he gave a paint job to that included the bucking horse medical logo he had designed and its new call sign, MS-195. (Mortimore family photo)
The Hearse/Ambulance
In the 1950s, it was a common practice to run an ambulance out of the local funeral homes in rural Wyoming. According to current co-owner, Mark Mortimore, this is due to the fact that the funeral homes were the ones that had a big enough car to fit the cot, patient and attendant into.
Thus, the funeral hearse doubled as a makeshift ambulance. Imagine being hurt and seeing a hearse pull up.
“Back in the old days, it was literally swoop and scoot,” Mortimore said. “You put the patient in the hearse just to get him to the hospital. That's where they had their best chance of survival.”
The funeral home staff and volunteers would grab the patient, put them on the cot, and load them into the car to get them to the hospital. There was no real medical care unless a local doctor was along for the ride.
“There's always a jump seat right off the side,” Mortimore said. “And that's where your attendant would sit in the back.”
Today, there are still a ambulances ran by funeral homes in Wyoming, but they are few and far between.
The emergency services the Mortimore family supplied as an ambulance progressed considerably since the original days when Mark's grandfather was called on to deliver patients.
Becoming An Official Ambulance Service
In the 1960s, the Mortimores bought their first fully equipped ambulance.
At that time, hearse manufacturers recognized a need in the market. They started supplying specialized vehicles such as the Cadillac ambulances to its funeral homes who were doubling as emergency services.
By the 1970s, the Cowboy State was in need of more extensive emergency medical services with actual trained medics.
“They finally decided that they needed to get a realistic emergency medical service (EMS) system in the state of Wyoming and Dad sat on that board,” Mortimore said. “He was part of the group that modernized EMS into the state of Wyoming.”
In one of these early board meetings, it was decided that the emergency services would have their own identification number starting with the letters MS for medical services and followed by a specific number.
Clark immediately spoke up and claimed MS-1 and MS-2 for his two ambulances he currently had operating. The rest of the board snagged the next group of MS numbers for their respective counties.
The prestigious call signs have belonged to the Hot Springs County ambulance service ever since. In later years, when Clark expanded his service to the oil field communities of Grass Creek, approximately 35 miles northwest of Thermopolis going towards Cody.
With the additional ambulance, the Mortimores added MS-195 to their line-up.
The Grass Creek expansion happened out of a need for more immediate help when crashes happened on the remote highway, far from the Mortimore base in Thermopolis.
The Mortimores had jumped in to fill the void since two of their EMTs lived out in the remote region and other volunteers worked in the oil field during the day.
“They were closer to the wrecks out there, so Dad said let’s grab another ambulance and we'll park it there,” Mortimore said. “So that's what he did and that's when we got 195.”
Clark Mortimore designed the bucking horse medical logo that adorned the emergency service uniforms since the 1960s. The uniforms are being retired as the Mortimore Ambulance Service is being liquidated and the family will concentrate on the funeral home. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
Clark Mortimore designed the bucking horse medical logo that adorned the emergency service uniforms since the 1960s. The uniforms are being retired as the Mortimore Ambulance Service is being liquidated and the family will concentrate on the funeral home. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
Clark Mortimore designed the bucking horse medical logo that adorned the emergency service uniforms since the 1960s. The uniforms are being retired as the Mortimore Ambulance Service is being liquidated and the family will concentrate on the funeral home. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
Originally the Mortimore Funeral Home used a hearse was to pick up emergency patients and bring them to the hospital in Thermopolis, Wyoming . In the 1960s, Clark Mortimore bought a Cadillac ambulance and began to expand his services with small ambulances. (Mortimore family photo) 
Rob Mills and Mark Mortimore won first place in a contest testing their emergency service skills. Clark Mortimore was on the original Wyoming State board that helped make EMS training mandatory in the state for emergency services. (Mortimore family photo)
Driving Ambulance Tricky Business
Mark Mortimore had joined the emergency side of the family business when he was still a teenager.
At 19, he was tasked with driving an ambulance and got his first lesson how important it was for the driver to pay attention to the patients.
“I was helping out at the funeral home at the time, and they had a transfer that needed to go over to Lander,” Mortimore said. “They said, well, you're taking it.”
Mortimore was nervous but his dad gave him no option. After driving the patient over, the teenager asked the nurse with him how he did. Not so good, was her answer.
“She told me that whatever it feels like up front, multiply that by ten in the back of an ambulance,” Mortimore said. “When you're going around that corner, any little bounce on that corner is magnified.”
Mortimore was horrified that he had bounced his first patient so much, but he said that the lesson was a godsend. It was his first step towards helping out with this side of the family business.
By the 1970s, EMS training was mandatory, and Mortimore started taking classes. In the meantime, he was expected to help with lifting the patients and helping out where he could until he passed the course.
Mortimore was also reminded to always be aware of where his orderlies were. His dad had learned this lesson the hard way.
It was a cold, windy winter night and Clark needed to transfer a patient to Casper in their Cadillac ambulance. Riding along was EMT Bert Strahn who sat in the back of the ambulance with the patient. The patient was buckled in and could hardly move when the call of nature hit.
With no place to stop for such an issue, Strahn handed the patient a bottle.
After a bit of a struggle in the confined space, the problem was taken care of. Strahn was determined that he not going to carry this full bottle of urine all the way to Casper.
They were in the Wind River Canyon, south of Thermopolis, maneuvering the curves and wind when Strahn tapped on the back of the window of the ambulance. He wanted Clark to stopand this was the only way they had to communicate with each other.
Clark pulled over at the tunnels and Strahn clambered around the patient and out of the ambulance’s back doors to empty out the bottle.
“The wind blows the door shut and dad hears the door shut,” Mortimore said. “He assumes Bert's back in and takes off.”
The patient was left alone in the back of the ambulance and Strahn was stranded on the edge of the highway in the winter wind with a stunned expression on his face.
The patient struggled to get out of the seatbelts locking him place but he was also laughing so hard he could barely move. Finally, he managed to tap on the window and get Clark’s attention.
By then, they had driven several miles and had to flip around to pick up the cold and angry Strahn who had been left with no coat and only the empty bottle.
It was lessons like these that also taught the Mortimores that humor was some of the best medicine.
On-Call
The ambulance calls only averaged about three to five a week, so the emergency crews were on call rather than taking straight shifts.
In the early days, patients would call the sheriff’s department who would then patch them through to the funeral home.
The Mortimore family would never know if a call coming through was for an emergency or for their funeral home so someone always had to be around to take the call.
When pagers were introduced, the family suddenly had more freedom to leave the funeral home. Today, they wonder how they survived without the use of cell phones.
Mortimore said that the local employers were easy to work with over the years and made it so his team of on-call EMT’s could immediately leave work to answer the emergency calls.
“Employees would tell their bosses that we needed help,” Mortimore said. “They would tell them, go! You guys need to go. They didn’t even question it.”
An End To An Era
After nearly 80 years of transporting patients in Hot Springs County, the Mortimore Ambulance service is being sold off piece by piece.
The family is liquidating their equipment including the MS-1, MS-2 and MS-195 ambulances which were all branded with the logo Clark had drawn up years ago of the bucking horse and medical symbol.
“It was a wonderful way to help and support the community,” Mortimore said. “It's really rewarding when people come up and they tell you how much they appreciate you and everything our family has done. Especially when they tell me thank you, you saved my life.
“There’s no greater reward than that.”
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
