Sequim resident Harvey Martin is no stranger to responding to emergencies. Earlier this year, however, the 89-year-old was on the other end of some critical help.
Originally from Pennsylvania, Martin moved to Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1969, working as an electrician until 1984. He then retired and settled in Sequim.
“I went out to the weather bureau and did some research,” Martin recalls, seeking a place that was “not too much over 70 in the summertime, didn’t get much below freezing during winter.” He came back with two choices: San Diego, Calif., and Sequim.
“And I never wanted to live in California anyway so Sequim was the obvious choice. Here I am.”
Besides his professional career, Martin was an active volunteer firefighter for several years. In 1953, he helped organize a department in a small Pennsylvania town.
“We had departments (respond to) a big fire but they wouldn’t let us locals touch anything because we didn’t know what do,” he recalls. “That made us feel kind of embarrassed, so we decided to form our own volunteer fire department.”
He formed another volunteer department while he lived in Fairbanks, and, when he moved to Sequim, volunteered with Fire
District 3 for about 13 years at the Carlsborg station.
“Most of them know me pretty well,” Martin says of his fellow firefighters.
In February of this year, he got some well-timed medical help from that same fire district.
“At about 9:45 a.m. on Monday, Feb. 29, in the 500 block of Fifth Avenue in
Sequim, I parked my car, got out and proceeded to trip and fall, landing on my left shoulder and head on a concrete ‘car stop.’ I immediately started yelling ‘Help!’
Quick response from the medics at Fire District 3 Station — just a couple — of blocks south — got me prepared for the trip to Port Angeles. My next conscious moment was hearing the siren on the Olympic Ambulance transporting me toward Olympic Memorial Hospital in Port Angeles, where, I am told, they found that I had broken my neck.
I next remember being loaded into the waiting helicopter for transport to Harborview Hospital in Seattle, where I found myself in a hospital bed.
Doctors at Harborview felt that my neck would ‘heal itself’ and I was sent home encased in a very uncomfortable neck brace.
After about three weeks at home with said neck brace, I was sent to the Port Angeles hospital where it was determined that my neck vertebra was not healing as expected and that I would need to return to Harborview for an operation to ‘fuse’ the bones together.
After the operation, I was sent to health rehabilitation in Sequim for three weeks and then home, where I am currently abiding.
As soon as I am cleared to drive again, I will consider my health has gone ‘full circle’ and will return to living as comfortable a life as possible. I will turn 90 on Aug. 21.
I want to state now that the prayers of my friends at Sequim Bible Church had a big part in my ‘recovery.’”
Everyone has a story and now they have a place to tell it. Verbatim is a first-person column that introduces you to your neighbors as they relate in their own words some of the difficult, humorous, moving or just plain fun moments in their lives. It’s all part of the Gazette’s commitment as your community newspaper. If you have a story for Verbatim, contact editor Michael Dashiell at editor@sequimgazette.com.
