And the West is History: Karl Graham, ‘father’ of La Plata County EMS – 1981

Pueblo native Karl Graham arrived in Durango in 1960. After 20 years in the building trades, he was appointed manager of Plaza Lumber in 1964. Looking for a career change, he took a job at Mercy Hospital as chief orderly in early 1968. His timing could not have been better. In August that year, when the two Durango mortuaries notified the county they would no longer provide ambulance service by year’s end, Mercy agreed to take over. Graham’s managerial experience earned him the position of service director. He took the new Colorado EMT training course, becoming one of the first three EMTs in the state. He later became a charter member of the National Registry of EMTs and the first certified EMT instructor in the region. Over the next 28 years, he ran innumerable emergency EMS calls and trained more than 1,000 pre-hospital providers in La Plata County while maintaining his duties as ambulance service director. He was named Durango Citizen of the Year in 1979 and received many other awards during his long career. He never retired. Graham died peacefully in his lounger chair at home while on his lunch hour. He was 75. Graham left a remarkable legacy of dedicated EMS service to the residents of Southwest Colorado. – Ed Horvat for Animas Museum, edhorvat@animasmuseum.org (Catalog Number: 16.32.3 from the La Plata County Historical Society Photo Collections)