Chappaqua VAC was founded in 1936 by the members of the American Legion. The Ambulances as shown in the early pictures were converted hearses, with little space for treatment. CVAC's first call was reportedly a broken leg in Armonk.

After WW II new members of the Legion took over for the WW I veterans who had started the Corps. The ambulance was stored in Nielson's garage which is where the current gas station is located downtown. An employee was available 24 hours a day to move the cars out of the way and get the ambulance out. The police would then call around for a crew and they would pick the truck at the garage.

On occasion we would only have one person available so that person would drive the ambulance to the scene, treat and load the patient with the police. The officer would lock his car and drive the ambulance with the Corps member would be in back performing treatment.

Up until the 60's only Legion members could belong to the Corps. In 1962 they were down to around 7 active members. Then Eric Nicolaysen helped a kid who broke his leg by his office. Several weeks later the Legion changed their by-laws to permit non-legion members to join. From that point on CVAC recruited non-legion members, who quickly became a majority of the Corps.

The current building was built in the late 40's. In the mid 50"s the legion bought the building and converted it to a garage and a legion hall. In the early 70's CVAC was incorporated and the legion gifted the building, but soon after when the box style ambulances were introduced we then had to build the new garage addition.

In 1967 the first EMT program started in NY and 7 of the 8 members became certified emergency technicians, the highest percent at the time in the state. The combined course was 80 hours where today, it is over 200. Then training then did not include CPR, vehicle extrication, drug therapy and more. Back then we often fueled the ambulance with our own money. Keeping the ambulance supplied and maintained unfortunately meant deciding what was absolutely necessary. We also wore very little protective gear, rarely used gloves or masks.

When we went to the medical center we could expect to spend several hours at a minimum while the center decided if they would accept the patient. At Northern Westchester Hospital there was no emergency room physician. They only had a nurse on duty. They would call the physician covering, and wait for him to come from his office. We would have to wait to start treatment as the doctor had to decide whether to treat or leave the patients in his office. Sometimes we would perform CPR for several hours in relays till the MD came to declare.

Mutual aid was just a friendly hand shake with your neighbors with no pre-arranged or central dispatch. Pagers came into use in the late 70's but we could not afford one for every member so they were returned at Eric Nicolaysen's office Monday and picked up on Friday for weekend duty.