Before the ALERT air ambulance service was founded in 1975, a determined corps of professionals did whatever it took to handle emergency medical calls in Northwest Montana.

Dr. Van Kirke Nelson was among those rescue pioneers. 

In the pre-ALERT days, many of the Kalispell doctors would keep boots and gear ready.

“If we had an emergency, like a broken leg up the North Fork, they’d drive by to get us,” Nelson recalled. “We’d jump into the appropriate clothes and go with the ambulance. And they’d let it rip.”

Emergency service took to the air when pilots Hank Galpin and Ted Parod were partners in Mountain West Helicopters and flew for ALERT before Kalispell Regional Hospital got its own helicopter.

“They’d stop [with the helicopter] and pick me up in my front yard or at the old hospital,” Nelson said.

Nelson, 82, a charter member of the ALERT board, is stepping down this year after 37 years of service. He spent some time last week remembering the early years and a pivotal rescue that led to the creation of the Advanced Life-support Emergency Rescue Team, today known simply as ALERT.

A tragedy in the Hungry Horse drainage was the turning point, and Nelson vividly remembers it. A 26-year-old logger was working alongside his father in the remote reaches of the Hungry Horse area when he was badly injured.

“We didn’t know how bad it was at the time,” he said. “He was hit by a widowmaker [a hazardous broken limb], sideswiped by a tree.”

A helicopter was in the area, assigned to a Forest Service project. It was available but by no means equipped for a rescue in the wilderness. Nevertheless, the chopper was the only hope for a rescue, so using a wire basket dangling from the aircraft, they flew the young man out, Nelson said. However, he couldn’t be treated en route to the hospital and died.

Loggers rallied the medical community to establish an air ambulance service.

A group of professionals over the years toyed with the idea of jumping out of planes to provide emergency medical care.

“We hired a jump master from the Korean War” to train us in using parachutes, Nelson recalled. The group chartered a small plane at the Kalispell City Airport.

“But they didn’t tell us they were military chutes, and we dropped like a rock,” he said with a laugh. “We all survived, though there were a few sprained ankles.”

This experience solidified the mission.

“We knew what we wanted to do,” Nelson said.

In 1975, air ambulance services were few and far between. When ALERT formed, there was only one urban hospital-based helicopter advanced life support system, based in Denver. 

ALERT was the first rural air service.

ALERT pioneers used the Denver system, plus Seattle’s Medic One, the premier ground advanced life-support system in the United States, to shape Kalispell’s program into a unique model of care.

George Clark, then the administrator of the Kalispell hospital, was among the early ALERT organizers, and when he decided the hospital would take over the program, local logger Clyde Smith stepped in to help financially.

“He signed the contract and put his business up as collateral,” Nelson said. “That was a huge boost.”

Smith’s son had been injured in a remote area, and after a rugged rescue on a logging trail, Smith declared: “There’s got to be a better way.” 

Nelson, an obstetrics-gynecologist of local renown in Kalispell — he delivered 7,000 babies in Kalispell between 1962 and his retirement five years ago — remembers the day he delivered a baby in the ALERT helicopter. They had picked up a pregnant woman in distress in Browning and were on their way to Kalispell for an emergency Caesarean section.

“Everyone leaned to the side and she gave one big push,” he said.

Perhaps the most memorable air rescue for Nelson happened in late spring one year in ALERT’s early days when a hiker atop the Ptarmigan Wall in Glacier National Park slipped and fell.

“It was about 3:30 to 4 in the afternoon. Ted Parod still had the air ambulance with Hank Galpin. We flew to the top of Ptarmigan; he [the injured hiker] was on the Elizabeth Lake side,” Nelson recollected.

The hiker’s companion had hiked to Many Glacier to get help. As the helicopter made a slow circle around looking for a place to set down, “Parod flew 1,500 vertical feet below where he was,” he said. “I said, ‘Ted, what are you doing?’”

To make a long story short, the two park rangers they’d picked up to locate the hiker had to be dropped off and were forced to hike overnight through the mountains to their cabin in Belly River. And Nelson still remembers the queasy feeling from the dramatic take-off, when they “popped over the ridge and dropped like a rock” until the pilot got enough momentum to propel the aircraft forward.

Nelson also has fond memories of Sister Mercedes, who ran the laboratory at the old Kalispell General Hospital and “had her own ideas.” 

One of her mandates was having the flight nurses wear white dresses and caps, hugely impractical attire for delivering in-flight care. When Sister Mercedes headed back to the Sacred Heart Convent in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the new dress code for flight nurses became rust-colored jumpsuits.

The air ambulance service has conducted more than 15,500 helicopter missions since it began, saving 1,420 lives.

“It’s incredible how many people ALERT reaches out to,” Nelson said.

He also was involved in starting the fine art auctions that have become a main event at the annual ALERT fundraising banquets. This year’s banquet is Saturday. 

Money was especially tight during ALERT’s early years.

“It was the best way we knew to make money,” he said. “Western art was popular at the time. The artists got 50 percent of the proceeds, and we raised from $15,000 to $30,000, depending on the year.”

ALERT has the unique distinction of having responded to the most bear attacks of any air ambulance in the United States. Above all, though, it continues to accomplish the mission of its founders.

“The helicopter has done what it was envisioned to do,” Nelson said. “It has saved lives.”

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.