A 1987 thank-you letter from Tega Cay resident Todd Branson captures the city's volunteer Rescue Squad responding to a backyard fall in under five minutes.
The Tega Cay Historical Society published the letter on Oct. 8 as part of its Tega Tradewinds Newsletter Archive series. Scott Miller sourced it from original print editions held in the Tega Cay History Archive.
On Saturday, Oct. 24, 1987, Branson fell about 10 feet from a 16-foot ladder while trimming ivy from a fireplace chimney on his rear deck. A small stepladder supporting the larger ladder collapsed, sending him down. His wife, Phyllis, heard the crash and called the Tega Cay Rescue Squad.
Help arrived within five minutes.
Branson suffered a left knee bent at an abnormal angle, a deep forehead cut, a small fracture in his left wrist and assorted bruises. Squad president Jeannie Weaver was among the first on scene. Members George Jacobs and ambulance driver Gary Groetsch also responded. Tega Cay police officers Rusty Case and Aaron Head arrived to help. Branson was transported to Piedmont Medical Center.
By Nov. 17, 1987, Branson had his arm cast removed and wrote a letter to the Tradewinds, Tega Cay's community newsletter. It ran in the December 1987 issue under the heading "A Special Message for Some Special People from Todd Branson."
"The simplest way to begin this is just to say: thank God for the Tega Cay Rescue Squad," Branson wrote in the 1987 letter.
The Tradewinds editors added a note alongside the letter, relaying the squad's own warning that its membership was shrinking even as Tega Cay grew. That concern proved well-founded. The June 1988 Tradewinds reported the squad went inactive on June 1, 1988, because of a critical shortage of EMTs. The March 1989 issue reported it reactivated on March 1, 1989, and answered its first call at 6:05 p.m., five minutes after coming back online.
The squad had been founded in 1976 after a drowning in one of Tega Cay's coves exposed how slowly outside emergency responders could reach the peninsula, according to the Historical Society's broader history of the city's first responders.
By the 1980s, members carried beepers and stayed on call around the clock. The squad reached its peak in the early 1990s with more than 30 active members providing 24/7 coverage.
The Historical Society is asking anyone who served on the Rescue Squad in 1987, or who remembers Weaver, Jacobs, Groetsch or the Bransons, to share memories through the Tega Cay History Facebook Group or the contact page at TegaCayHistory.com.
