This story is part three of the “Tribute to Brown County first responders” series by Wade Linville (editor of The News Democrat, The Ripley Bee, and The Brown County Press).

Doug Bentley had no plans of being a paramedic in Brown County after serving in the Vietnam War in 1966-67 with the U.S. Navy (HM2) and as a flight paramedic for the U.S. Marines (Sgt.), but sometimes it takes a special person to help one see their calling in life. In Bentley’s case, that special person was former Ripley Life Squad Captain Bob Frodge.

Bentley, now captain of the Ripley Life Squad/EMS (semi-retired), said it was the late Frodge’s persistence that led him to become a first responder in Brown County, as he would become one of the first paramedics to serve on emergency response crews in the county. Over his 38 years as a local first responder, Bentley has saved innumerable lives.

“Bob was the reason I got into this,” said Bentley. “I had been in the military, I was in the Vietnam War as a medic, and I had seen all there I wanted to see. Bob was actually chief here (at the Ripley Life Squad) and he was the only EMS instructor in the county at the time. I met him through his wife, Nancy, when she was a nurse at the hospital. She introduced me to him one time and I joined the life squad association that he was president of at the time. He hounded me for two years, telling me I needed to become an EMT with all of my experience.”

Early on, Bentley expressed to Frodge his lack of interest in becoming a local first responder. He had witnessed enough bloodshed during his service in the Vietnam War and already held a good career at a local hospital.

For two years, Bob Frodge continued with his attempts to get Bentley to become an EMT until one day Bentley agreed to take one of Frodge’s upcoming EMT classes.

“He said he really needed some help in the county, so I finally said I would take it,” Bentley said of Frodge’s offer to take his EMT training course. At that time, local life squads were all volunteer.

“At that time I wasn’t even thinking about joining the squad or anything. I had my job at the hospital, you know, but once I got into it, it brought back memories of my old days…taking care of people and trying to save their lives. I actually started liking it. Then, I found out how much camaraderie there is in those services with the fire (department), life squad, and everything,” Bentley said of his start as a first responder in Brown County.

Bentley recalled how much times have changed since Frodge’s days as a local first responder.

“He trained a lot of the older folks when the squad started here in the county in 1975,” Bentley said of Frodge. “That’s when they first started sending squads out (here), before that they used the hearse.”

“Whenever they went to a traffic accident, they had one guy in the hearse and they would put the patient in the back, put them on a little oxygen, and take them on to the hospital. They never got any treatment. They would just run them to the hospital, and that was the ambulance service in this county prior to 1975,” Bentley explained.

Bentley began his service with the Ripley Life Squad/EMS in 2008 when moving to Ripley after serving for 22 years with the Georgetown Volunteer Life Squad from 1985-2007. He served as chief at Georgetown for a total of more than 10 years.

Taking Frodge’s advice by serving as a first reponder/paramedic has been a decision Bentley is pleased to have made, giving him the opportunity to use his amazing skills and training to save lives and help others suffering from medical emergencies, skills and education he would pass along by training and educating younger local first responders for a number of years.

“I do it because I want to help people,” Bentley said of his many years of service as a local first responder and instructor.

In addition to his service as a first responder, Bentley worked as the director of radiology and vice president of clinical services at Brown County General Hospital, working at the hospital for a total of 31 years.

For eight years, Bentley worked as operations manager for Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati (1982-89).

For four years, he was EMS coordinator for Brown County in the 1990s and taught the advanced EMT class in the county, having the highest class passing rate in the state of Ohio for advanced EMT courses at that time with a class average of 96 percent.

Bentley also flew as a paramedic with Air Evac for a few years.

“During the second half of my tour in Vietnam I flew, and I did med evac out in the field and had my share of dodging lead, but I thought if I ever got the chance to fly again I would like to do that,” Bentley explained why he decided to fly with Air Evac.

Bentley has enjoyed serving with numerous other longtime first responders over the decades, working together to significantly improve emergency response services in Brown County.

Once serving as chief of the Georgetown Volunteer Life Squad, Bentley worked with then Georgetown Fire Department Chief Joe Brookbank so the two departments could both respond together to provide assistance on some emergency calls such as traffic accidents where there may not be a fire to put out, but lives to be saved.

He also developed a close friendship with the late Georgetown Fire Department Assistant Chief Louis Rockey during his many years of service on the Georgetown Volunteer Life Squad. Rockey served on the fire department for nearly 50 years before passing away in 2015, and his son, Joe Rockey, is the current Georgetown Fire Department chief.

Bentley also became good friends with former New Richmond Chief Mark Baird where he ran part-time for 15 years. That’s where Bentley received his firefighter training.

Bentley also served as a first responder in the Mt. Orab area, and enjoyed his time of making runs and instructing training courses with Mt. Orab first responder Joe Gilligan.

“I’ve met a lot of good people over the years,” Bentley said of his time as a local first responder.

While Bentley’s biggest reward as a first responder is being able to help others and save lives, he has received a great deal of public recognition for his many years of service.

In 1995, he was the recipient of the EMS Spirit of Excellence Award from the University of Cincinnati and Children’s Hospital medical centers.

He received the 2004 International (Canada and the United States) Summit Award for Health Care Professionals, and that same year he was a nominee for the Albert E. Dyches Health Care Worker of the Year Award from the Ohio Hospital Association.

He has served as a paramedic with the Ripley Life Squad, New Richmond Fire and EMS part-time for 15 years, the Georgetown Life Squad, Eastern Ambulance Service, and as a tactical paramedic with the Brown County Regional S.W.A.T.

Many longtime first responders would agree that their most memorable rewards are the positive outcomes from emergency calls that they respond to. Sharing their experiences can be difficult, but there is one emergency call that stands out in Bentley’s mind from an incident that took place around 10 years ago. It was an emergency call to Dunbar Road involving a 12-year-old boy who had been accidentally shot in the chest with a slug from a 12-gauge shotgun. The boy was accidentally shot while he and his cousin were playing with a gun they thought was not loaded.

It was a stormy night, and a flooded creek was preventing emergency crews from accessing the home where the wounded boy was located.

“We couldn’t get air care because it was storming and raining, so I get there and they are trying to figure out how to get across the creek,” Bentley explained.

Listening to the radio call, Bentley knew the wounded boy was starting to lose consciousness and was losing blood fast.

Aware that the boys’ grandfather had driven his four-wheel drive truck across the flooded creek just prior, Bentley asked the grandfather for a ride across the flooded creek, jumped in the bed of the truck with his medical bag, asked which first responders were joining him for the ride, and headed across the flooded creek to the home.

“This boy was going to die if we didn’t get somebody to him,” said Bentley.

The boys’ gunshot wound to the chest was so large that Bentley placed his entire hand in the wound to help prevent further blood loss.

After making a stop at a Brown County hospital to start blood on the boy and attempt to seal the large hole, they then took him to Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati.

“It took us 42 minutes from the time we left Brown County to the time that boy was on the surgery table at Children’s,” said Bentley.

Bentley and fellow emergency responders were able to save the life of the 12-year-old boy.

“He is alive today,” Bentley said of the person who suffered the gunshot wound nearly 10 years ago.

Bentley plans to fully retire from the Ripley Life Squad/EMS towards the end of this year, but the skills, education, and displays of courage and selflessness he has shared with younger generations of first responders over the decades will benefit Brown County for many years to come.