Births, riots and Granny: Part of the ambulance lore

(Editor's Note: This is the final installment in a short series of articles on ambulance service in Pontiac.)

It's been more than 13 months since the last private ambulance service ceased operations. Prior to Aug. 1, 2021, what grew into Duffy-Baier-Snedecor had been in business for more than 80 years.

There was some history in ambulance service in Pontiac prior to World War II with at least three funeral homes providing such service. Ira Irwin started his his business after purchasing the Pape Funeral Home, which had an ambulance service. In 1952, Ed Behrendt purchased the Irwin Funeral Home and the ambulance service seemed to change.

Ed Behrendt was born and raised in Chicago. He went to mortuary school and was a veteran of World War II. In 1952, Behrendt bought the Irwin business and moved to Pontiac. A few years later, he hired on Tim Linskey to help run the business.

Mike Linskey, the son of Tim Linskey, said his father was mowing the lawn at St. Mary's Cemetery when Mr. Behrendt asked him if he would help with the funeral home and ambulance.

Tim Linskey worked for Mr. Behrendt from 1956 until his sudden death in 1972.

“I don't know how he learned of Irwin's being for sale but he bought Ira Irwin's funeral home and they all moved down here,” Mike Linskey said. “They had two daughters, Mary Lee and Barb.”

Ed Behrendt did a lot for the city of Pontiac and its residents, Linskey and Joe Stock said recently.

“Ed was a good guy, he did a lot of things for the community, a lot of things the community didn't even know about,” Stock said. “People knew it, it just wasn't publicized. He just did it.”

It was the ambulance service that must have really appealed to Mr. Behrendt. He did a lot to keep the service up to date.

“He was just into the ambulance service,” Linskey said.

“When he bought that van in '64, that raised some eyebrows around here. (Before), it was all hearses and station wagons. It was such a different idea.” Linskey added.

On time, Behrendt showed a picture of a van to Tim Linskey and said that's what he's getting as a new ambulance, it was a light brown.

“Ed loved brown, everything was brown. It was a tan and he bought it,” Mike Linskey said.

The van was a novelty because it was so knew. Before, ambulances were basically hearses and station wagons. Behrendt maintained his 1956 Mercury station wagon after getting the van, but he sent the van out first on emergencies. He got another van, a white one, less than 10 years later.

One individual who did a lot for ambulance service in Pontiac for many, many years was Granville Pletz.

“How he got in the business was, he had daughter with a leg problem but he had to transport her to a hospital out of state,” Linskey said. “He borrowed a cot from Ed (Behrendt) to transport his daughter for treatments. That's how he met Ed Behrendt.”

“He was big into EMS, too. I don't know when he started,” Stock said of Pletz.

“The year changed every year for him,” Linskey interjected.

“He was instrumental in a lot of stuff,” Stock added. “He pushed EMS big time and staying on top of things for the advancement. He was Ed's right-hand man, and Jerry's.”

“He was loyal,” Linskey said.

Granny Pletz also provided a lot of memories during his tenure in the ambulance service. One of the more humorous ones was a time he got in an accident. By this time, the Behrendt Ambulance Service had been purchased by Jerry Duffy.

“Jerry (Duffy) called me one day, it was Christmas eve, it was Granny's birthday,” Linskey said while trying not to laugh too hard. “And he says, 'I'm gonna pick you up, gotta go pick up Granny. He's put the ambulance out in a field.'

“He was going to Odell for something and it was slick. He had the Mercury station wagon ambulance,” Linskey added as Stock tried to restrain his laughter. “We're approaching him and we see Granny out in the field and there's no roof lights. I said, 'Jerry's where's the roof lights?'

“Jerry goes, 'Granny, where's the roof lights?' (Pletz) said, they're out in the hood, Jerry. They came off.' They were the old bar lights.”

Granville Pletz, like Linskey and Stock, had seen an awful lot of bad things running the ambulance for so many years. One of the challenges back then, Linskey said, was the roads weren't numbered. When phone call came in, the driver needed to know where to go.

“Weather is a big factor — slick roads, snowing, blowing, raining hard, you can't see,” Stock said. “You get out and everything gets wet. Some of the worst was working accidents, that's dangerous.”

But with the bad, there was also some good. Many calls involved the impending birth of a child and the need to get to the hospital quickly. Stock said that births are not as common as some might think, however. He said he's made runs where the baby was born when they got there, and there babies born once at the hospital, just very few were born in the ambulance.

Not everyone was likely disappointed over that fact.

“Mr. and Mrs. Behrendt knew I was terrified having to deliver a baby, so when I got a call at the funeral home for a maternity call, Ellen Behrendt would say, 'Hello, Mikey? This is your lucky day.' And I'd say, 'I'm driving,'” Linskey said.

Among the more unpleasant things that have taken place was having to deal with a situation on the south side of Pontiac in the summer of 1978. It was Joe Stock's birthday — July 22. Linskey described it as a “horribly, horribly hot day.”

“All I remember is, I think it was me and Pletz, we were getting ready to go in and Harris' were already in and they were coming out,” Stock said. “They said, 'don't go in, they're throwing things and just raising all kinds of hell.' We backed out and we didn't go back in for awhile.”

The Harris crew was there to answer a call before the riot broke out.

“I went in for a fireman, they (the rioting prisoners) had (burned) the chapel, it was in full flames, it was a hot day — a fireman had heat stroke,” Linskey said. “We went in there and I remember the intense heat from the fire. We got him on the cot and we got him to St. James and they packed him in ice. They saved him, he was on his way out. It was pretty back heat stroke.”

Linskey noted that the riot had been quelled by the time he went in.

“That was probably the biggest thing I remember,” Stock.

It's been 13 months since the Duffy-Baier-Snedecor ambulance service provided care for Pontiac and the Livingston County area. But the memories of how it served the community, how its predecessors served the community, and those who made it an important service live on.

This article originally appeared on Pontiac Daily Leader: Ed Behrendt Granville Pletz ambulance 1978 riot