PARIS — Sixty-eight-year-old

of Paris has good reason to be proud.

She was just honored with the Maine EMS Lifetime Achievement Award.

The EMS Lifetime Achievement Award is for involvement with EMS in Maine for at least 10 years, consistently performing above and beyond expectations in system development, patient care, service involvement, and/or community involvement.

Frost has done all that and more.

And unbeknownst to her, she was nominated for the award.

“When Bob [Hand] came and told me I was speechless … I didn’t know I had been nominated!”

However, she is uncomfortable with the attention.

“I just do my job,” she says. “I don’t need to be recognized, I just do what needs to be done and I enjoy my work.”

Contrary to Frost’s opinion, her coworkers and members of other emergency services don’t agree. In fact, nominations for her to receive the award apparently set a record.

“When Maine EMS called me,” says her boss, PACE Director Robert Hand, “they said it was more nominations than they’d ever seen for a single person.”

“It is a wonderful recognition,” Frost admits, “for anyone who gets the award.”

Sadly, Frost was not at the ceremony in the Hall of Flags at the statehouse in Augusta. She was in the hospital getting yet another chemo treatment.

Frost has acute Leukemia.

She says she is currently “clean” and the prognosis is good. 

“I am doing chemo to keep it that way,” she explains.

But chemo means she can no longer work.

Because chemotherapy damages the white blood cells, in effect shutting down the immune system, Frost can’t be exposed to potential illness.

So after almost 40 years in one form or other of EMS service, Frost is retiring, so to speak.

“I was planning to retire in June anyway,” she laughs.

Where it began

It has been an impressive ride for Frost. Not only does she work for three EMS services, she helped found one of them.

After growing up in Fryeburg, she married, had a child and moved to Norway.

There she went to work for the B.E. Cole show factory, which used to be located where Norway Fire Department is today. Then she worked for SnoCraft in Norway on Tannery Street, making snowshoes.

And, finally, Frost went to work for Russells Ambulance Service in Norway as an EOA (Esophageal Obturator Airway) technician. However, after owner Charlie Russell was murdered, she says, his brother, Isaac, sold the business to Stephens Memorial Hospital and ultimately it became PACE ambulance service. So her last day with Russell was her first day with PACE.

She moved to Stoneham during this time and at that time the closest EMS were either Fryeburg or Norway.

“One day there was a call,” she says, “at Evergreen Valley in West Stoneham … a heart attack … and it took Russells an hour to an hour and a half to get there because of the weather.”

So Frost and “some people I knew  thought we ought to at least have a First Responder [in Stoneham] so we took classes to be ambulance attendants and when we realized there were only a few more classes to be an EMT – we took them and started Stoneham Rescue.” This was around 1978, she thinks.

She has served Stoneham Rescue ever since until last year when she became ill. She has also been with Oxford Fire & Rescue for the past 10 years.

Frost laughs at herself and says, “I don’t know why I chose a medical career … I am terrified of needles!”

She goes on to explain that one reason is she doesn’t sleep at night.

“If I couldn’t sleep at night I thought I might as well be doing something!”

So she took on 24-hour and 16-hour shifts with PACE, full time and has been doing that for years.

For the past 26 years. she’s served at the paramedic level.

Her worst experience, she recalls, was in the early ’90s when she responded to three fatalities in one 16-hour shift and one of the deaths was someone she knew.

She smiles, as she recalls her best experience. 

“A blind lady who was a frequent flyer [often needed an ambulance] recognized my voice and was always glad it was me. She said, ‘Peggy it makes me feel so good to hear your voice.'”

It made Frost feel good as well.

Cupid in the rig?

We have to assume, another “best” experience might be meeting her future husband.

One doesn’t normally think of an ambulance as a dating venue but Frost met her husband, Brad [chief, Paris Fire Department], when he was a patient of hers.

“PACE does rehab for firefighters … this means after they have gone through two [air] tanks we check their vitals.” Firefighters have to rest until their vital signs are normal. Brad Frost’s didn’t go back to normal so they transported him to SMH to be checked out … on Peggy’s rig.

“We kept running into each other at trainings at scenes,” she recalls. 

They married and have been together for 20 years. 

Frost has three daughters from her first marriage and a grandson. She also has multiple step-children.

And even though she couldn’t go to Augusta to receive her award, her husband and daughters were there in her place.

She says a lot of her future plans depend on her illness, but she does hope to get to do some in-country travelling.

“We have been on cruises to the islands, Hawaii and Alaska,” she says, “but I still want to travel the states.”

Frost says she and her husband enjoy relaxing on the lake in a friend’s boat, hunting and fishing. Someday, she muses, she might like to go south.

“I don’t like dealing with the snow!”

In the meantime, she will most likely be getting her head around the fact that a whole lot of people think she is pretty special.

“It is hard to imagine how many lives Peg has touched throughout her career in western Maine,” says Hand. “She has worked for PACE from day one.  In the last 10 years, at PACE alone, Peg has responded to a staggering 2,831 calls!  She is a founding member of Stoneham Rescue, works for Oxford Fire/Rescue, and also gives time to the Paris Fire Department. 

“Long ago she dedicated herself to the care and well-being of others and it shows in her everyday actions.  It is not unusual to find Peg on a call, whether she was on duty or not, because she is always willing to come out and lend a hand.  She is active and involved in our community. 

“Peg has always been advocate for education and the progression of the EMS System,” Hands says. “Peg is a friend to all of us here at PACE and in the hospital.  Always willing to listen or help out in any way she can.  In our eyes, there is absolutely no one more deserving of the Maine EMS Lifetime Achievement Award.”

Enough said.

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