View allAll Photos Tagged oxygen_therapy
Physiotherapist and covid-19 patient during rehabilitation exercises.
Man ventilated with high-flow oxygen therapy is about to try stand on his own outside his bed for a first time in a long time.
Taken in J. Strusia Hospital, Poznań.
I took these photos inside the infectious ward of the Karol Jonschers Children's Hospital, Poznań. It was a time when epidemic armageddon caused by RSV and the next wave of covid was going through pediatric wards. All isolation rooms were then occupied by infected children under the care of a parent. In the corridor there are rows of cardboard boxes with overalls, spare beds. Some kids were treated with oxygen. Less than 2-year-old kid subjected to high-flow oxygen therapy. Only there were fewer ventilators here than in adults. But they also happened.
The photos would not have been made without help and kindness from the crew of Department VIII. Special thanks are due to prof. dr hab. n. med. Magdalena Figlerowicz and Karolina Samarzewska, MA, who agreed to the presence of a annoying man with a camera in their clinic.
Autmn/winter 22/23. Poznań, PL.
In my garden in Mountain Ash.
I survived. After a torrid time where I’ve had Covid 19 for more than 2 weeks and been hospitalised in the Covid unit at University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff I’m so pleased to say that I seem to be coming out the other side. I placed a “Happy Photo” of my grandchildren on here from my hospital bed as my way of saying goodbye as I didn’t expect to make it but I stabilised well with oxygen therapy and a determined attitude and I’m now back home recovering.
Richard and Ann Collier, as 2 of my closest friends would have notified everyone if the worst had happened but I was determined to fight for those grandchildren of mine.
I really need to say a huge THANK YOU to all of you who sent kind words to me and encouraged me to keep fighting, and also to the AMAZING staff in the Covid unit. I love you all.
My pulse rate is 79 to 80 beats per minute. 🌞
Baruch HaShem! !ברוך השם
Blessed is The Name!!
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SpO2 Defined as Peripheral Oxygen Saturation
incenter.medical.philips.com/doclib/enc/fetch/586262/5864...
Introduction
The body's need for oxygen is certain. Its availability at a tissue level is some- times in doubt. Blood gas measurements provide critical information regard- ing oxygenation, ventilation, and acid-base status.
However, these measurements only provide a snapshot of the patient's condition taken at the time that the blood sample was drawn. It is well known that oxygenation can change very quickly. In the absence of continuous oxygenation monitoring, these changes may go undetected until it is too late.
Pulse oximeters measure blood oxygen saturation noninvasively and continuously.
What is SpO2?
A blood-oxygen saturation reading indicates the percentage of hemoglobin molecules in the arterial blood which are saturated with oxygen. The reading may be referred to as SaO2. Readings vary from 0 to 100%. Normal readings in a healthy adult, however, range from 94% to 100%.
The term SpO2 means the SaO2 measurement determined by pulse oximetry. As explained in the section "Considerations When Using Pulse Oximetry," under some circumstances pulse oximetry gives different readings, and the use of a different term indicates this.
How Does Pulse Oximetry Work?
Within the Sp02 sensor, light emitting diodes shine red and infrared light through the tissue. Most sensors work on extremities such as a finger, toe or ear. The blood, tissue and bone at the application site absorb much of the light. However, some light passes through the extremity. A light-sensitive detector opposite the light source receives it.
SpO2 Sensors
Most sensors work on extremities such as a finger, toe or ear. The sensor measures the amount of red and infrared light received by the detector and calcu- lates the amount absorbed. Much of it is absorbed by tissue, bone and venous blood, but these amounts do not change dramatically over short periods of time.
The amount of arterial blood does change over short periods of time due to pulsation (although there is some constant level of arterial blood). Because the arterial blood is usually the only light absorbing component which is changing over short periods of time, it can be isolated from the other compo- cents.
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Oxygen Saturation As Presented in Wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_saturation_(medicine)
Oxygen saturation is a term referring to the fraction of oxygen-saturated hemoglobin relative to total hemoglobin (unsaturated + saturated) in the blood. The human body requires and regulates a very precise and specific balance of oxygen in the blood. Normal blood oxygen levels in humans are considered 95-100 percent. If the level is below 90 percent, it is considered low resulting in hypoxemia.[1] Blood oxygen levels below 80 percent may compromise organ function, such as the brain and heart, and should be promptly addressed. Continued low oxygen levels may lead to respiratory or cardiac arrest. Oxygen therapy may be used to assist in raising blood oxygen levels. Oxygenation occurs when oxygen molecules (O
2) enter the tissues of the body. For example, blood is oxygenated in the lungs, where oxygen molecules travel from the air and into the blood. Oxygenation is commonly used to refer to medical oxygen saturation.
Contents [hide]
1Definition
2Physiology
3Measurement
4Pulse oximetry
5Medical significance
6See also
7References
8External links
Definition[edit]
In medicine, oxygen saturation (SO2), commonly referred to as "sats," measures the percentage of hemoglobin binding sites in the bloodstream occupied by oxygen.[2] At low partial pressures of oxygen, most hemoglobin is deoxygenated. At around 90% (the value varies according to the clinical context) oxygen saturation increases according to an oxygen-hemoglobin dissociation curve and approaches 100% at partial oxygen pressures of >10 kPa. A pulse oximeter relies on the light absorption characteristics of saturated hemoglobin to give an indication of oxygen saturation.
Physiology
The body maintains a stable level of oxygen saturation for the most part by chemical processes of aerobic metabolism associated with breathing. Using the respiratory system, red blood cells, specifically the hemoglobin, gather oxygen in the lungs and distribute it to the rest of the body. The needs of the body's blood oxygen may fluctuate such as during exercise when more oxygen is required [3] or when living at higher altitudes. A blood cell is said to be "saturated" when carrying a normal amount of oxygen.[4] Both too high and too low levels can have adverse effects on the body.
Measurement[edit]
An SaO2 (arterial oxygen saturation, as determined by an arterial blood gas test[5]) value below 90% causes hypoxemia (which can also be caused by anemia). Hypoxemia due to low SaO2 is indicated by cyanosis. Oxygen saturation can be measured in different tissues:
Venous oxygen saturation (SvO2) is measured to see how much oxygen the body consumes. Under clinical treatment, a SvO2 below 60% indicates that the body is in lack of oxygen, and ischemic diseases occur. This measurement is often used under treatment with a heart-lung machine (extracorporeal circulation), and can give the perfusionist an idea of how much flow the patient needs to stay healthy.
Tissue oxygen saturation (StO2) can be measured by near infrared spectroscopy. Although the measurements are still widely discussed, they give an idea of tissue oxygenation in various conditions.
Peripheral oxygen saturation (SpO2) is an estimation of the oxygen saturation level usually measured with a pulse oximeter device. It can be calculated with pulse oximetry according to the following formula:
SpO2 = HbO2/ (HbO2 + Hb)
Example: Pulse Oximeter
Pulse oximetry is a method used to estimate the percentage of oxygen bound to hemoglobin in the blood. This approximation to SaO2 is designated SpO2 (peripheral oxygen saturation). The pulse oximeter consists of a small device that clips to the body (typically a finger, earlobe or an infants foot) and transfers its readings to a reading meter by wire or wirelessly. The device uses light-emitting diodes in conjunction with a light-sensitive sensor to measure the absorption of red and infrared light in the extremity. The difference in absorption between oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin makes the calculation possible.[5]
Medical significance
Effects of decreased oxygen saturation[6]
SaO2Effect
85% and aboveNo evidence of impairment
65% and lessImpaired mental function on average
55% and lessLoss of consciousness on average
Healthy individuals at sea level usually exhibit oxygen saturation values between 96% and 99%, and should be above 94%. At 1600 meters altitude (about one mile high) oxygen saturation should be above 92%.[7]
An SaO2 (arterial oxygen saturation) value below 90% causes hypoxia (which can also be caused by anemia). Hypoxia due to low SaO2 is indicated by cyanosis, but oxygen saturation does not directly reflect tissue oxygenation. The affinity of hemoglobin to oxygen may impair or enhance oxygen release at the tissue level. Oxygen is more readily released to the tissues (i.e., hemoglobin has a lower affinity for oxygen) when pH is decreased, body temperature is increased, arterial partial pressure of carbon dioxide (PaCO2) is increased, and 2,3-DPG levels (a byproduct of glucose metabolism also found in stored blood products) are increased. When the hemoglobin has greater affinity for oxygen, less is available to the tissues. Conditions such as increased pH, decreased temperature, decreased PaCO2, and decreased 2,3-DPG will increase oxygen binding to the hemoglobin and limit its release to the tissue.[8]
In my garden in Mountain Ash
I survived. After a torrid time where I’ve had Covid 19 for more than 2 weeks and been hospitalised in the Covid unit at University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff I’m so pleased to say that I seem to be coming out the other side. I placed a “Happy Photo” of my grandchildren on here from my hospital bed as my way of saying goodbye as I didn’t expect to make it but I stabilised well with oxygen therapy and a determined attitude and I’m now back home recovering.
Richard and Ann Collier, as 2 of my closest friends would have notified everyone if the worst had happened but I was determined to fight for those grandchildren of mine.
I really need to say a huge THANK YOU to all of you who sent kind words to me and encouraged me to keep fighting, and also to the AMAZING staff in the Covid unit. I love you all.
Posing without the O₂ pump! It was a good couple of hours' walk, easily a mile around the pond, and I marched along at my own pace. At the end of the circuit, a youngish mom accosted me, mentioned that her 64-year-old mother had just been given the identical unit, and could she have a picture with me? Motivation to get the old doll out-and-about, it turns out; she apparently feels life is over now that she has to use oxygen therapy. I gave her my card, and said "everyone needs to get out, it keeps you living better."
Pose sans la pompe à oxygène! En marchant facilement sur un kilomètre autour de l'étang, j'ai marché à mon rythme, portant mon concentrateur d'oxygène tout en utilisant le tuyau nasal. A la fin du circuit, une jeune maman m'a accostée, m'a mentionné que sa mère de 64 ans venait de recevoir l'unité identique, et pouvait-elle avoir une photo avec moi? Motivation pour faire sortir la matriarche ; elle sent que la vie est finie maintenant qu'elle doit utiliser l'oxygénothérapie. Je lui ai donné ma carte et lui ai dit "tout le monde doit sortir, ça vous permet de mieux vivre."
Please, read my profile, leave a comment - or visit my website!
Faving lots of my images without a comment? I'll block you.
SVP, commenter ou lire mon profil , ou visiter mon page sur Web!
Je bloque les membres qui mettent beaucoup de mes photos en favori. Merci de laisser un commentaire!
We drove right by this place so we had to take a peak inside in this Grand Hotel. This place must have been very luxurious in its glory days. It had an oxygen therapy room, massage rooms and more. Even now, after years of decay, the grandeur is still showing.
An entry for Category 11 (Grimm Reality) of MocWars, as part of The Misfits team.
In this modern reinterpretation of the Grimm Fairy Tale The Glass Coffin, a young boy fails to understand why the bullheaded doctor refuses to let him give his sister her favorite stuffed animal while undergoing Hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
While Larry is in the Hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber I drive a short distance to River Grove Park here in Kingwood,Texas and enjoy the amazing birds that visit it daily! In the distance swimming along is a White Pelican and on the limb fishing for a snack is a Great Blue Heron. Sadly on the little island is a White Pelican that for some reason did not survive the migration... not sure if it was injured along the way or something got it after it arrived... so very sad!!! It is a blessing for me to survey these wondrous scenes in Creation as I wait for Larry!!!!
I took these photos inside the infectious ward of the Karol Jonschers Children's Hospital, Poznań. It was a time when epidemic armageddon caused by RSV and the next wave of covid was going through pediatric wards. All isolation rooms were then occupied by infected children under the care of a parent. In the corridor there are rows of cardboard boxes with overalls, spare beds. Some kids were treated with oxygen. Less than 2-year-old kid subjected to high-flow oxygen therapy. Only there were fewer ventilators here than in adults. But they also happened.
The photos would not have been made without help and kindness from the crew of Department VIII. Special thanks are due to prof. dr hab. n. med. Magdalena Figlerowicz and Karolina Samarzewska, MA, who agreed to the presence of a annoying man with a camera in their clinic.
Autmn/winter 22/23. Poznań, PL.
Check Out #Hypobaric_Chamber In Sydney at Oxygen International which is best known for its #oxygen_therapy_treatment. We have a #variety of #services to offer that are of #affordable prices and that #benefits you as well. To get best deals call us today at 1300 722 840.
he 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic is an ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).The outbreak started in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, in December 2019. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020 and recognized it as a pandemic on 11 March 2020. As of 4 April 2020, more than 1.18 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported in more than 200 countries and territories,[5] resulting in more than 63,900 deaths. More than 244,000 people have recovered. The virus is mainly spread during close contact,[c] and by small droplets produced during coughing,[d] sneezing, or talking. These small droplets may also be produced during breathing, but rapidly fall to the ground or surfaces and are not generally spread through the air over large distances.People may also catch COVID-19 by touching a contaminated surface and then their face. The virus can survive on surfaces up to 72 hours. It is most contagious during the first 3 days after symptom onset, although spread may be possible before symptoms appear and in later stages of the disease. The time between exposure and symptom onset is typically around five days, but may range from 2 to 14 days. Common symptoms include fever, cough, and shortness of breath.Complications may include pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome. There is no known vaccine or specific antiviral treatment.Primary treatment is symptomatic and supportive therapy. Recommended preventive measures include hand washing, covering one's mouth when coughing, maintaining distance from other people, and monitoring and self-isolation for people who suspect they are infected. Efforts to prevent the virus spread include travel restrictions, quarantines, curfews, workplace hazard controls, event postponements and cancellations, and facility closures. These include national or regional quarantines throughout the world (starting with the quarantine of Hubei), curfew measures in mainland China and South Korea, various border closures or incoming passenger restrictions,screening at airports and train stations, and outgoing passenger travel bans. The pandemic has led to severe global socioeconomic disruption, the postponement or cancellation of sporting, religious, and cultural events, and widespread fears of supply shortages resulting in panic buying.Schools and universities have closed either on a nationwide or local basis in more than 160 countries, affecting nearly 90 percent of the world's student population. Misinformation about the virus has spread online, and there have been incidents of xenophobia and discrimination against Chinese people and people of East and Southeast Asian descent and appearance, as well as against people from emergent hotspots around the globe. Health authorities in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, China, reported a cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown cause on 31 December 2019, and an investigation was launched in early January 2020. The cases mostly had links to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market and so the virus is thought to have a zoonotic origin. The virus that caused the outbreak is known as SARS-CoV-2, a newly discovered virus closely related to bat coronaviruses, pangolin coronaviruses, and SARS-CoV. The earliest known person with symptoms was later discovered to have fallen ill on 1 December 2019, and that person did not have visible connections with the later wet market cluster. Of the early cluster of cases reported in December 2019, two-thirds were found to have a link with the market.[314][315][316] On 13 March 2020, an unverified report from the South China Morning Post suggested that a case traced back to 17 November 2019, in a 55-year-old from Hubei province, may have been the first. On 26 February 2020, the WHO reported that, as new cases reportedly declined in China but suddenly increased in Italy, Iran, and South Korea, the number of new cases outside China had exceeded the number of new cases within China for the first time. There may be substantial underreporting of cases, particularly among those with milder symptoms. By 26 February, relatively few cases had been reported among youths, with those 19 and under making up 2.4% of cases worldwide. Government sources in Germany and the United Kingdom estimate that 60–70% of the population will need to become infected before effective herd immunity can be achieved. Cases refers to the number of people who have been tested for COVID-19, and whose test has been confirmed positive according to official protocols.[326] The number of people infected with COVID-19 will likely be much higher, as many of those with only mild or no symptoms may not have been tested. As of 23 March, no country had tested more than 3% of its population, and many countries have had official policies not to test those with only mild symptoms, such as Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland. The time from development of symptoms to death has been between 6 and 41 days, with the most common being 14 days.[18] As of 4 April 2020, approximately 63,900[4] deaths had been attributed to COVID-19. In China, as of 5 February about 80% of deaths were in those over 60, and 75% had pre-existing health conditions including cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. The first confirmed death was on 9 January 2020 in Wuhan. The first death outside mainland China occurred on 1 February in the Philippines, and the first death outside Asia was in France on 14 February. By 28 February, outside mainland China, more than a dozen deaths each were recorded in Iran, South Korea, and Italy. By 13 March, more than forty countries and territories had reported deaths, on every continent except Antarctica. Several measures are commonly used to quantify mortality. These numbers vary by region and over time, and are influenced by the volume of testing, healthcare system quality, treatment options, time since initial outbreak, and population characteristics such as age, sex, and overall health. The death-to-case ratio reflects the number of deaths divided by the number of diagnosed cases within a given time interval. Based on Johns Hopkins University statistics, the global death-to-case ratio is 5.4% (63,902/1,181,825) as of 4 April 2020.[4] The number varies by region. Other measures include the case fatality rate (CFR), which reflects the percent of diagnosed individuals who die from a disease, and the infection fatality rate (IFR), which reflects the percent of infected individuals (diagnosed and undiagnosed) who die from a disease. These statistics are not time bound and follow a specific population from infection through case resolution. A number of academics have attempted to calculate these numbers for specific populations. Some researchers have also attempted to estimate the IFR for the pandemic as a whole. In China, estimates for the "crude CFR", i.e. the death-to-case ratio decreased from 17.3% (for those with symptom onset 1–10 January 2020) to 0.7% (for those with symptom onset after 1 February 2020). The WHO asserts that the pandemic can be controlled. The peak and ultimate duration of the outbreak are uncertain and may differ by location. Maciej Boni of Penn State University stated, "Left unchecked, infectious outbreaks typically plateau and then start to decline when the disease runs out of available hosts. But it's almost impossible to make any sensible projection right now about when that will be". However, the Chinese government's senior medical adviser Zhong Nanshan argued that "it could be over by June" if all countries can be mobilized to follow the WHO's advice on measures to stop the spread of the virus. Adam Kucharski of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine stated that SARS-CoV-2 "is going to be circulating, potentially for a year or two".According to the Imperial College study led by Neil Ferguson, physical distancing and other measures will be required "until a vaccine becomes available (potentially 18 months or more)". William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University stated, "I think it's unlikely that this coronavirus—because it's so readily transmissible—will disappear completely" and it "might turn into a seasonal disease, making a comeback every year". The virulence of the comeback would depend on herd immunity and the extent of mutation. Symptoms of COVID-19 can be relatively non-specific and infected people may be asymptomatic. The two most common symptoms are fever (88%) and dry cough (68%). Less common symptoms include fatigue, respiratory sputum production (phlegm), loss of the sense of smell, shortness of breath, muscle and joint pain, sore throat, headache, chills, vomiting, hemoptysis, diarrhea, or cyanosis. The WHO states that approximately one person in six becomes seriously ill and has difficulty breathing.[357] The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lists emergency symptoms as difficulty breathing, persistent chest pain or pressure, sudden confusion, difficulty waking, and bluish face or lips; immediate medical attention is advised if these symptoms are present. Further development of the disease can lead to severe pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, sepsis, septic shock and death. Some of those infected may be asymptomatic, with no clinical symptoms but test results that confirm infection, so researchers have issued advice that those with close contact to confirmed infected people should be closely monitored and examined to rule out infection.Chinese estimates of the asymptomatic ratio range from few to 44%. The usual incubation period (the time between infection and symptom onset) ranges from one to 14 days; it is most commonly five days. As an example of uncertainty, estimates of loss of smell for people with COVID-19 were 30%, and then estimates fell to 15%. Some details about how the disease is spread are still being determined. The disease is believed to be primarily spread during close contact and by small droplets produced during coughing, sneezing, or talking;[9][10][12] with close contact being within 1 to 2 metres (3 to 6 feet). Studies have found that an uncovered coughing can lead to droplets travelling up to 4.5 metres (15 feet) to 8.2 metres (27 feet). Respiratory droplets may also be produced during breathing out, including when talking, though the virus is not generally airborne. The droplets can land in the mouths or noses of people who are nearby or possibly be inhaled into the lungs.[369] Some medical procedures such as intubation and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) may cause respiratory secretions to be aerosolized and thus result in airborne spread. It may also spread when one touches a contaminated surface and then touches their eyes, nose, or mouth.[9] While there are concerns it may spread by feces, this risk is believed to be low.[9][10] The Government of China denied the possibility of fecal-oral transmission of SARS-CoV-2. The virus is most contagious during the first 3 days after onset of symptoms, although spread may be possible before symptoms appear and in later stages of the disease.People have tested positive for the disease up to 3 days before onset of symptoms suggesting transmission is possible before developing significant symptoms. Only few reports of laboratory-confirmed asymptomatic cases exist, but asymptomatic transmission has been identified by some countries during contact tracing investigations. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) states that while it is not entirely clear how easily the disease spreads, one person generally infects two to three others.The virus survives for hours to days on surfaces. Specifically, the virus was found to be detectable for up to three days on plastic and stainless steel, for one day on cardboard, and for up to four hours on copper. This, however, varies based on the humidity and temperature. However, pets or other livestock may test positive but can't pass on coronavirus to humans, as there were reported cases of infected pets such as a cat in Belgium and two dogs in Hong Kong. There have been reports were those diagnosed with coronavirus and seemingly recovered, have been readmitted to hospitals after testing positive for the virus a second time. These cases are believed to be worsening of a lingering infection rather than re-infection. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus, first isolated from three people with pneumonia connected to the cluster of acute respiratory illness cases in Wuhan. All features of the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus occur in related coronaviruses in nature. Outside the human body, the virus is killed by household soap, which bursts its protective bubble. SARS-CoV-2 is closely related to the original SARS-CoV. It is thought to have a zoonotic origin. Genetic analysis has revealed that the coronavirus genetically clusters with the genus Betacoronavirus, in subgenus Sarbecovirus (lineage B) together with two bat-derived strains. It is 96% identical at the whole genome level to other bat coronavirus samples (BatCov RaTG13). In February 2020, Chinese researchers found that there is only one amino acid difference in certain parts of the genome sequences between the viruses from pangolins and those from humans, however, whole-genome comparison to date found at most 92% of genetic material shared between pangolin coronavirus and SARS-CoV-2, which is insufficient to prove pangolins to be the intermediate host. Infection by the virus can be provisionally diagnosed on the basis of symptoms, though confirmation is ultimately by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) of infected secretions or CT imaging. A study comparing PCR to CT in Wuhan has suggested that CT is significantly more sensitive than PCR, though less specific, with many of its imaging features overlapping with other pneumonias and disease processes. As of March 2020, the American College of Radiology recommends that "CT should not be used to screen for or as a first-line test to diagnose COVID-19". The WHO has published several RNA testing protocols for SARS-CoV-2, with the first issued on 17 January. Testing uses real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR). The test can be done on respiratory or blood samples. Results are generally available within a few hours to days. A person is considered at risk if they have travelled to an area with ongoing community transmission within the previous 14 days, or have had close contact with an infected person. Common key indicators include fever, coughing, and shortness of breath. Other possible indicators include fatigue, myalgia, anorexia, sputum production, and sore throat. Characteristic imaging features on radiographs and computed tomography (CT) of people who are symptomatic include asymmetric peripheral ground glass opacities and absent pleural effusions. The Italian Radiological Society is compiling an international online database of imaging findings for confirmed cases. Due to overlap with other infections such as adenovirus, imaging without confirmation by PCR is of limited specificity in identifying COVID-19. However, a large study in China compared chest CT results to PCR and demonstrated that though imaging is less specific for the infection, it is faster and more sensitive, suggesting its consideration as a screening tool in epidemic areas.[395] Artificial intelligence-based convolutional neural networks have been developed to detect imaging features of the virus with both radiographs and CT. Strategies for preventing transmission of the disease include maintaining overall good personal hygiene, washing hands, avoiding touching the eyes, nose, or mouth with unwashed hands, and coughing or sneezing into a tissue and putting the tissue directly into a waste container. Those who may already have the infection have been advised to wear a surgical mask in public. Physical distancing measures are also recommended to prevent transmission. Many governments have restricted or advised against all non-essential travel to and from countries and areas affected by the outbreak. However, the virus has reached the stage of community spread in large parts of the world. This means that the virus is spreading within communities, and some community members don't know where or how they were infected. Health care providers taking care of someone who may be infected are recommended to use standard precautions, contact precautions, and eye protection.
Contact tracing is an important method for health authorities to determine the source of an infection and to prevent further transmission. Misconceptions are circulating about how to prevent infection; for example, rinsing the nose and gargling with mouthwash are not effective. There is no COVID-19 vaccine, though many organizations are working to develop one. Hand washing is recommended to prevent the spread of the disease. The CDC recommends that people wash hands often with soap and water for at least twenty seconds, especially after going to the toilet or when hands are visibly dirty; before eating; and after blowing one's nose, coughing, or sneezing. This is because outside the human body, the virus is killed by household soap, which bursts its protective bubble. CDC further recommended using an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol by volume when soap and water are not readily available.[398] The WHO advises people to avoid touching the eyes, nose, or mouth with unwashed hands. Surfaces may be decontaminated with a number of solutions (within one minute of exposure to the disinfectant for a stainless steel surface), including 62–71% ethanol, 50–100% isopropanol, 0.1% sodium hypochlorite, 0.5% hydrogen peroxide, and 0.2–7.5% povidone-iodine. Other solutions, such as benzalkonium chloride and chrohexidine gluconate, are less effective. The CDC recommends that if a COVID case is suspected or confirmed at a facility such as an office or daycare, all areas such as offices, bathrooms, common areas, shared electronic equipment like tablets, touch screens, keyboards, remote controls, and ATM machines used by the ill persons, should be disinfected. Health organizations recommended that people cover their mouth and nose with a bent elbow or a tissue when coughing or sneezing, and disposing of any tissue immediately. Surgical masks are recommended for those who may be infected, as wearing a mask can limit the volume and travel distance of expiratory droplets dispersed when talking, sneezing, and coughing. The WHO has issued instructions on when and how to use masks. According to Stephen Griffin, a virologist at the University of Leeds, "Wearing a mask can reduce the propensity [of] people to touch their faces, which is a major source of infection without proper hand hygiene." Masks have also been recommended for use by those taking care of someone who may have the disease. The WHO has recommended the wearing of masks by healthy people only if they are at high risk, such as those who are caring for a person with COVID-19, although they also acknowledge that wearing masks may help people avoid touching their face. Several countries have started to encourage the use of face masks by members of the public. China has specifically recommended the use of disposable medical masks by healthy members of the public, particularly when coming into close contact (≤1 metre) with other people. Hong Kong recommends wearing a surgical mask when taking public transport or staying in crowded places. Thailand's health officials are encouraging people to make face masks at home out of cloth and wash them daily. The Czech Republic and Slovakia banned going out in public without wearing a mask or covering one's nose and mouth. The Austrian government mandated that everyone entering a grocery store must wear a face mask. Israel has asked all residents to wear face masks when in public. Taiwan, which has been producing ten million masks per day since mid-March, required passengers on trains and intercity buses to wear face masks on 1 April.Panama has asked its citizens to wear a face mask. Face masks have also been widely used in Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore. Social distancing (also known as physical distancing) includes infection control actions intended to slow the spread of disease by minimizing close contact between individuals. Methods include quarantines; travel restrictions; and the closing of schools, workplaces, stadiums, theatres, or shopping centres. Individuals may apply social distancing methods by staying at home, limiting travel, avoiding crowded areas, using no-contact greetings, and physically distancing themselves from others. Many governments are now mandating or recommending social distancing in regions affected by the outbreak. The maximum gathering size recommended by government bodies and health organizations was swiftly reduced from 250 people (if there was no known COVID-19 spread in a region) to 50 people, and later to 10 people. On 22 March 2020, Germany banned public gatherings of more than two people. Older adults and those with underlying medical conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, respiratory disease, hypertension, and compromised immune systems face increased risk of serious illness and complications and have been advised by the CDC to stay home as much as possible in areas of community outbreak. In late March 2020, the WHO and other health bodies began to replace the use of the term "social distancing" with "physical distancing", to clarify that the aim is to reduce physical contact while maintaining social connections, either virtually or at a distance. The use of the term "social distancing" had led to implications that people should engage in complete social isolation, rather than encouraging them to stay in contact with others through alternative means. The government in Ireland released sexual health guidelines during the pandemic. These included recommendations to only have sex with someone you live with, who does not have the virus or symptoms of the virus. In late March 2020, it was reported that for more than 70 million people in India, who live in clustered slums and comprise of about one sixth of the total urban population, social distancing is not only physically impossible, but economically too. The reported reproduction rate of the COVID-19 disease could be 20% higher in Indian slums due to impenetrable living conditions, as compared to the global ratio, i.e. 2 to 3 percent.Self-isolation at home has been recommended for those diagnosed with COVID-19 and those who suspect they have been infected. Health agencies have issued detailed instructions for proper self-isolation. Many governments have mandated or recommended self-quarantine for entire populations living in affected areas.] The strongest self-quarantine instructions have been issued to those in high risk groups. Those who may have been exposed to someone with COVID-19 and those who have recently travelled to a country or region with widespread transmission have been advised to self-quarantine for 14 days from the time of last possible exposure.Strategies in the control of an outbreak are containment or suppression, and mitigation. Containment is undertaken in the early stages of the outbreak and aims to trace and isolate those infected as well as introduce other measures of infection control and vaccinations to stop the disease from spreading to the rest of the population. When it is no longer possible to contain the spread of the disease, efforts then move to the mitigation stage: measures are taken to slow the spread and mitigate its effects on the healthcare system and society. A combination of both containment and mitigation measures may be undertaken at the same time. Suppression requires more extreme measures so as to reverse the pandemic by reducing the basic reproduction number to less than 1. Part of managing an infectious disease outbreak is trying to decrease the epidemic peak, known as flattening the epidemic curve.[457] This decreases the risk of health services being overwhelmed and provides more time for vaccines and treatments to be developed. Non-pharmaceutical interventions that may manage the outbreak include personal preventive measures, such as hand hygiene, wearing face-masks, and self-quarantine; community measures aimed at physical distancing such as closing schools and cancelling mass gathering events; community engagement to encourage acceptance and participation in such interventions; as well as environmental measures such surface cleaning. More drastic actions aimed at containing the outbreak were taken in China once the severity of the outbreak became apparent, such as quarantining entire cities and imposing strict travel bans. Other countries also adopted a variety of measures aimed at limiting the spread of the virus. South Korea introduced mass screening and localized quarantines, and issued alerts on the movements of infected individuals. Singapore provided financial support for those infected who quarantined themselves and imposed large fines for those who failed to do so. Taiwan increased face mask production and penalized hoarding of medical supplies. Simulations for Great Britain and the United States show that mitigation (slowing but not stopping epidemic spread) and suppression (reversing epidemic growth) have major challenges. Optimal mitigation policies might reduce peak healthcare demand by 2/3 and deaths by half, but still result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and health systems being overwhelmed. Suppression can be preferred but needs to be maintained for as long as the virus is circulating in the human population (or until a vaccine becomes available, if that comes first), as transmission otherwise quickly rebounds when measures are relaxed. Long-term intervention to suppress the pandemic causes social and economic costs. There are no specific antiviral medications approved for COVID-19, but development efforts are underway, including testing of existing medications. Taking over-the-counter cold medications, drinking fluids, and resting may help alleviate symptoms. Depending on the severity, oxygen therapy, intravenous fluids, and breathing support may be required. The use of steroids may worsen outcomes.Several compounds that were previously approved for treatment of other viral diseases are being investigated for use in treating COVID-19. The World Health Organization also stated that some “traditional and home remedies” that can provide relief of the symptoms caused by SARS-CoV-19. Increasing capacity and adapting healthcare for the needs of COVID-19 patients is described by the WHO as a fundamental outbreak response measure.[469] The ECDC and the European regional office of the WHO have issued guidelines for hospitals and primary healthcare services for shifting of resources at multiple levels, including focusing laboratory services towards COVID-19 testing, cancelling elective procedures whenever possible, separating and isolating COVID-19 positive patients, and increasing intensive care capabilities by training personnel and increasing the number of available ventilators and beds.
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This 1950s Peninsula Ambulance is parked in front of the vacant lot between Peninsula ambulance and the Flying “A” station at the corner of Middlefield and old Bayshore Highway.
www.sfgenealogy.com/sanmateo/history/ambulance/smambulanc...
As remembered by
Michael Ratliff Lutz
Introduction:
When I began researching my family’s history in Redwood City, California in the year 2004 I was certain that I would be able to find a lot of information about my uncle, Ralph H. Ratliff since his death in March of 1963 was front-page news in The Redwood City Tribune. To my surprise, he was nearly a forgotten man. The local historical societies only had a couple of old newspaper clippings. I only had the clippings and photos that my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff (Lutz) (Womer), had saved in her scrapbook over the years to work with. With the help of a few relatives I have been able to reconstruct the story of Ralph Ratliff and his Peninsula Ambulance Service.
Ratliff Enterprises as described in a 1961 Redwood City Tribune article:
Twelve women in three shifts work around the clock with their fingers virtually on the pulse of a vast segment of professional and business life. These women answer a monthly average of 38,000 telephone calls.
They are employees of Ratliff Enterprises, Inc a family owner corporation occupying its own two-story building at 1260 Marshall Street. Ratliff Enterprises operates the Redwood City Telephone Answering Service, which embraces the Sequoia District Physicians Exchange. It also operates the Peninsula Ambulance Service and the Peninsula Hospital Rental Service. Its ambulances respond to 500 calls monthly. The County of San Mateo subsidizes peninsula Ambulance Service.
Its rental service rents out anything needed for the care of patients in the home…such things as oxygen, refrigerated tents, wheel chairs, therapy lamps, traction equipment and beds.
The officers of the corporation are Ralph H. Ratliff, president: his wife Irene I. Ratliff: vice president their two sons and a daughter, K. Harold Ratliff and Ralph J. Ratliff, and Mrs. Virginia Collins, directors. Mrs. Ratliff manages the answering service with Mrs. Collins as the assistant manager. Harold is the manager and bookkeeper of the ambulance and rental divisions.
Mateo County uses a subsidy system with Peninsula Ambulance Service so they could discontinue their own emergency ambulance service. If the company couldn’t collect from individuals, the county would reimburse them $20 per call for all service ordered through police systems. Most calls came through the Sheriffs Office.
In 1960 Peninsula Ambulance received a subsidy of $18,000, a considerable savings compared to what it would have cost to operate their own system. Ambulance employees were taught advanced Red Cross first aide, basic obstetrics and oxygen therapy.
As to obstetrics, Ralph Ratliff personally delivered 10 babies while working shifts with his ambulance crews, three of these births occurred in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. It just happened that 10 mothers waited until the very last minute. Unlike in the storybooks, none of the babies were named after him.
The ambulance fees are $25 per call plus supplies used at the accident scene like splints and oxygen, and $12.50 if a second patient on a stretcher was involved. A third person with minor injuries could ride with the driver for free.
I was able to find reports of two of those baby deliveries in the San Mateo Times archives, one in La Honda on July 14, 1949, and another in the back of the ambulance on August 21 1957. It is true that neither baby was named Ralph after my uncle, but then again, they were both girls.
Oops, I nearly missed the boy he delivered on July 2, 1954. He wasn’t named Ralph either.
Recent generations probably don’t realize that emergency medical service used to be provided by private ambulance companies. Until the late 1970s when EMTs were stationed in firehouses, private ambulance services like Peninsula Ambulance Service and Harold Ratliff’s California Ambulance Service would respond to medical emergencies. Ambulance personnel received advanced first aide training from the American Red Cross. In fact, Ralph Ratliff was a first aide instructor for the Red Cross for several years. The classes were taught at the Sequoia Chapter of the American Red Cross, 3540 Middlefield Road in Menlo Park. There were six, two-hour sessions taught in the evening, ending in a Red Cross certificate for those who passed the course.
I’m probably not the best person to tell the story of Peninsula Ambulance since my contact with this part of my family was rather inconsistent over the years. My mother was half owner of Home Creek Resort at Huntington lake in Fresno County so except for two years in 1951 and 1952 when we wintered over with Ralph Ratliff’s family in Redwood City, my contact was limited to a couple of weeks on vacation every year. In my senior high school year, 1962-63 we moved to Redwood City, but that was just a few months before my uncle died. There was a time when you couldn’t go anywhere in Redwood City without bumping into a member of the Ratliff family, but now it seems I’m the only one left. Fortunately, my mother saved numerous newspaper articles and photographs that should be helpful.
Ralph H. Ratliff was born in Tallula, Illinois on November 05, 1903 to George O. and Carrie Ratliff of Jacksonville, Illinois. The family, including his older brother Frank Jerry Ratliff, and younger sister and my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff later moved to Los Angeles then to San Francisco in the 1920s. My grandfather, George O. Ratliff was in the real estate business but Ralph found working on cars more to his liking, so for several years he worked as an auto mechanic in San Francisco.
Prior to leaving Los Angeles, Ralph had a brief marriage to Mildred Hensley, and a son Ralph H. Ratliff Jr., born October 14, 1922. Ralph Jr. moved to San Francisco with the rest of the family and was cared for by my mother and grandmother until Ralph married Irene I. Haseltine of Redwood City in Palo Alto, California on May 8, 1925. Their first son, Kenneth “Harold” Ratliff was born November 04, 1925. They had two additional children, Ralph Junior Ratliff, born January 25, 1927 and Virginia Lois Ratliff, born May 21, 1928.
Irene Haseltine was a Redwood City girl, her emigrated to Redwood City from Wisconsin in the early 1900s. Ralph and Irene Ratliff continued to live in San Francisco until 1939 when, with financial assistance from his father George Ratliff, he opened the Peninsula Garage in Redwood City.
The first location of the Peninsula Garage was near Bayshore Highway, near Main and Bradford today. This section of Bayshore is now Veteran’s Blvd. The location near the highway made it easier for both the towing business and the ambulance business to respond quickly. When they moved to 432 Middlefield Rd. they were about the same distance from the highway as they were at Main and Bradford. There were no freeways then. The highways all had stoplights at major intersections. Bayshore Highway had only two lanes in each direction with no center divider. There were very few buildings along old Bayshore but there were a lot of billboards
Towing was a large part of the Peninsula Garage business. It was the towing business that got Ralph Ratliff started in the ambulance business. Ralph’s tow trucks were arriving at auto accident scenes long before the ambulance arrived. In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, asked my uncle to provide the community with some kind of ambulance service. Ralph purchased a used ambulance from a taxicab company, took first aide classes, and went into business. It’s not clear why a taxi company had an ambulance.
At first the Peninsula Garage and Peninsula Ambulance coexisted at the same address at 450 Main St., Redwood City. They also shared the same phone number for a while which probably caused some confusion, but there is no record of a tow truck responding to an ambulance call.
During the early 1940s the Ratliff family lived on Oxford Street in Redwood City. Oxford Street was pretty much out in the country then. There were very few other houses around. Later they moved to a large white house at 432 Middlefield Rd. near the corner of old Bayshore Highway. That location is now a county parking lot. That house also served as the base for the ambulance service.
This article about my cousin Harold Ratliff’s wedding reception pretty much sums up the Ratliff family in Redwood City during World War 2. My mother was living with the Ratliff’s on Oxford Street then. My father was away in the army and I was just born a month before or so before the article was written so it was easier for her to live with relatives. I was at this reception but don’t remember much.
Ironically, I was born in San Francisco. My family was from San Francisco but by 1944 my grand parents had moved to Burlingame and my mother was living in Redwood City. They all decided to go to a fireworks display at Kezar stadium in 1944, and that’s when and where I was born.
Redwood City Tribune, August 1944:
A large wedding party and reception was held in honor of newly wedded Mr. and Mrs. Harold Kenneth Ratliff, the former Miss Virginia Alberta French of San Francisco, at the home of the groom’s grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Alva Haseltine of 479 Sequoia Ave. last week.
Because of Harold’s short leave from the navy, in which he is a seaman second class, the couple was married in Reno on Aug. 23. They met several years ago when Virginia visited her aunt, Mrs. Tom Kelly of Redwood City.
For her wedding the bride chose the navy colors of navy blue and white. She wore a navy blue suit with white accessories and a gardenia corsage.
Harold is the son of Mr. and Mrs. R.H. Ratliff of 1474 Oxford St. He is the brother of Ralph and Virginia Ratliff who attend Sequoia High School and Ralph Harold Ratliff Jr. who is now in the U.S. Army at Camp Haan. Harold also attended Sequoia High School.
At the reception the table was decorated in blue and white centered with a tiered wedding cake topped with a miniature sailor and his bride. Many gifts were received by the newlyweds.
Attending the reception were Mr. and Mrs. George Ratliff, grandparents of the groom, Mrs. Nina Mardel Lutz, aunt, and son Michael Lutz; Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Keyser, aunt and uncle, and cousins, Bonnie, Phillip and Jimmie Keyser; Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Haseltine, aunt and uncle, and Neal and Dale Haseltine; Mrs. Jasper Haseltine, aunt, and Joanne and Freddie Haseltine, and Sgt. and Mrs. Herbert England, cousins, and daughter, Sharon Lee.
Also attending were Sgt. and Mrs. John Whittington, Mr. and Mrs. Tony Alvis and sons, Mr. Norman Peterson and Kenneth Peterson, USN.
Unable to attend were Mr. Jasper Haseltine, uncle, who is now overseas with the merchant marine, Sgt. Eddie Thoemke of the U.S. Army, and Mrs. Thoemke, uncle and aunt; and Sgt. Richard Lutz, uncle, who is currently stationed in Roswell, New Mexico.
This is my cousin Virginia (Ginny) Ratliff behind their home at 1474 Oxford St in Redwood City about in the late 1940s. That area behind her would be covered with houses by 1950.
Unfortunately, Harold Ratliff’s Marriage to Virginia French only lasted a couple of years. He later married Carol Sufczynski Dierks of Redwood City on March 26,1949.
Around 1948 the Ratliff family and the business moved to a new location at 432 Middlefield Road, now a parking lot for the San Mateo County Offices. The garage was sold and they purchased an answering service, Sequoia District Physicians Exchange.
Both the businesses and the family occupied the same large house. The answering service occupied what was a large living room. Fortunately the house must have had two living rooms, because there was another room of equal size with a connecting door. The upstairs served as quarters for the ambulance crews.
There was enough room in the house to accommodate my mother and me the winters of 1951 and 1952 during the off-season for my mother’s business, Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake, CA. From November to March we lived in Redwood City. I attended Monroe School, and mom worked shifts at the answering service.
On October 08, 1949 my uncle Ralph was nearly killed in a three-car pile up on old Pacheco Pass. He was on his way to Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake in Fresno County. The resort was co-owned by my mother, and uncle Frank “Jerry” Ratliff. Every fall the family gathered at the resort during deer season. I can remember my uncle in what was nearly a full body cast lying in a hospital bed in the living room of that house on Middlefield.
Getting to Monroe School was an easy walk then because Bradford connected Middlefield Rd. and Allerton St. Ralph Junior Ratliff and his family lived at 730 Allerton diagonally across from Monroe School so they were available to point me in the right direction when I got lost my first day. In one of those little coincidences that happen now and then, my cousin’s landlady at 730 Allerton was Mrs. Mary Tesolin, the mother of Carmen Tesolin, my future wife, though I didn’t actually meet her until 1963. In 1955, my cousin Ralph Junior Ratliff and family lived in the old carriage house on property at 726-730 Allerton Street. It sat next to an old farmhouse also owned by Mary “Sironi” Tesolin, Carmen’s mother.
Both of Ralph Ratliff’s sons worked shifts for the ambulance service as well as working other jobs, so Ralph Jr. and Harold were always descending the stairs to raid the refrigerator. One of Harold’s sons, Kenny, also lived there. Ralph and Irene Ratliff assumed the responsibility of caring for Kenneth Ratliff after Harold’s divorce from his first wife Virginia. They continued to care for Kenny until he joined the Navy in 1965.
Kenny and I slept in the glassed in front porch of the house. I remember it being quite cold, especially since my aunt Irene insisted on an open window, even in mid winter. Something about the health benefits of fresh air. It was also noisy. The police radio was always on in the living room for some reason. I didn’t understand why the radio wasn’t upstairs with the ambulance guys. The house was also very close to Bayshore Highway, and there was a stop light at Middlefield and Bayshore. Trucks that stopped at the light had to rev up their engines to get moving again. On the other side were the trains. The tracks were, a few blocks away, but the trains ran all night. I don’t think I got a lotta sleep.
In the late 1950s Harold and Ralph Junior Ratliff purchased the Flying “A” service station at the corner of Middlefield and Bayshore. Ralph Sr. helped with the financing.
In 1959 Ralph Junior Ratliff left the business and eventually moved his family to Oregon leaving Harold Ratliff the sole owner of the business.
In the late 1950s the County of San Mateo decided it needed the block that housed both Peninsula Ambulance Service and Ratliff’s Flying “A” so the Ambulance Business moved to a new location, and built a new building at 1260 Marshall St., and Harold Ratliff rejoined the Ambulance Company. The building on Marshall is still there and currently occupied by Aloha Flowers (2005).
Before the Kaiser Medical Center was completed in 1968 we used to set off 4th of July fireworks in front of the Ambulance Service. Kaiser was virtually built in our front yard. During the 1960s while Kaiser was being built my entire family worked at 1260 Marshall. My uncle ran the businesses, my cousins drove ambulances, and my mother ran the medical supply for a while. My aunt ran Sequoia Physicians & Surgeons Exchange in the same building. I even worked there when I was in high school in 1963.
After I was discharged from the U.S. Navy in 1967 I used the skills that I learned as a hospital corpsman to moonlight for various ambulance services while I was attending San Francisco State University. The skills required by civilian ambulance employees were nearly identical to those skills used by a field medic (corpsman) with the U.S. Marines. I worked in the operating room at the old Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. That made it possible for me to moonlight some nights and weekends for Bob’s Ambulance Service in Oakland while still on active duty.
Often, history is what is going on in the background of a photograph so the following photographs not only show some vintage Peninsula Ambulances from the 1940s and 50s, but also shows a large facility that belonged to the Mobil Oil Company. The Mobil facility was directly across Middlefield from both Peninsula Ambulance and the Flying “A” station. You can also see a tower appears close but was actually several blocks away at Frank’s Tannery. Just across the Highway from the Flying “A” was the Redwood City Rodeo Grounds. That’s about where the Department of Motor Vehicles is located now.
In 1961 Ralph Ratliff was voted president of the California Ambulance Association. On September 6th of that same year the San Mateo Times reported that my uncle and a California Highway Patrol Officer named Fred Hagen climbed down a 400-foot cliff on Tunitas Road to rescue a 16-year-old boy who was thrown from a Jeep when it hit a tree. My uncle was 57 years old at the time and had several younger drivers on his payroll, but he enjoyed the work so much that he was still taking regular turns behind the wheel of the ambulance.
People forget that before Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and specialized rescue vehicles, ambulance services did it all. Peninsula Ambulance Service covered most of San Mateo County, from delivering a baby in La Honda to rescuing a teenager coastside. I remember hearing my uncle’s voice on the ambulance radio informing the hospital that he was coming in from Half Moon Bay with one up and two down. That meant that he had two patients on gurneys and one on a hammock like device used only in extreme emergencies.
In most cases there were no freeways, so when an ambulance was coming in from coastside, it was traveling narrow twisting roads often in the fog. Some of those roads are still no fun to drive today.
The old Five Points Hotel at 2015 El Camino Real was the location of frequent calls. There was always trouble and ambulance calls to that location were always seen as dangerous. My uncle used to always complain about employees being injured on calls to the hotel. Some of the legendary danger may have been exaggerated, but the Redwood City Police closed down the hotel in the early 1950s.
My uncle was credited with saving the life of a man whose throat had been cut in a knife fight in the “five points area” on January 17, 1955. Somehow he managed keep the man from bleeding to death from a severed jugular vein on the way to the hospital, this according to the San Mateo Times.
It wasn’t always people who were rescued. When a 16 year old boy hit a dog with his motor scooter in 1957, he not only delivered the boy with a broken leg to the hospital, but he also delivered the dog to a vet.
That same year Uncle Ralph had to descend on a sling from a crane into a concrete vat to rescue a worker with a fractured spine. The worker was a welder working on a Bayshore Freeway overpass when he leaned too far into the vat.
On May 17, 1962 Ralph Ratliff represented Redwood City at the annual hearing conducted by the California State Chamber of Commerce. The Issues were the completion of the Five Points Overpass, the Junipero Serra Freeway (280), the Skyline Freeway and the Bayfront Freeway (101). There was also resolution offered by the City of Half Moon Bay seeking to continue the so-called San Bruno Freeway (380) to Half Moon Bay.
I’m not sure where my uncle stood on the last issue. This was just a couple of years after the City of Pacifica was formed to keep from being annexed by San Bruno, and a couple of years before Pacifica tried to annex all of the communities of the coastside down to Princeton By the Sea. Development was popular then. There was even a plan to make Montara into another Linda Mar.
Unfortunately, his election to the new post came shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer. His death in March 1963 was front-page news in the Times Tribune on March 18, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, whose Peninsula Ambulance Service has provided Redwood City’s emergency transportation for 19 years died Saturday afternoon after a long battle with cancer. Mr. Ratliff, 59, came here in 1939 to establish a garage and towing service at the corner of Main Street and Old Bayshore.
In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, told Mr. Ratliff that the community should be provided with some kind of ambulance service. Mr. Ratliff decided to go into the business. He began with one vehicle and today, with headquarters at 1260 Marshall St., has five.
A native of Springfield [actually Tallula], Ill., Mr. Ratliff came to Redwood City from San Francisco. He has been identified with many civic activities throughout the years, notably as the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Highway and Traffic Committee. It was for this group that he campaigned for the widening of Jefferson Ave. and Woodside Rd., the extension of Edgewood Rd. to Half Moon Bay, and many of the local provisions of the local in the proposed city-county highway bond issue.
Mr. Ratliff also was a member of the Redwood City Exchange club, Redwood City Elks lodge, Modern Woodmen of the World and United Commercial Travelers. He was a charter member and past president of the California Ambulance Association, and was awarded a 20-year pin as a first aide instructor by the Red Cross.
Mr. Ratliff’s family will continue to run the ambulance firm.
Survivors include his widow, Irene, at the family home, 1007 Katherine St.; Sons Ralph J., Menlo Park and Harold K., Redwood City; a daughter; Mrs. Virginia Collins, Los Altos and a son by a previous marriage, Ralph H. Ratliff Jr. of Los Angeles. A Sister, Mrs. Mardel Womer [My mother’s married name with her second husband] resides in Redwood City. There are 15 grandchildren.
Private Funeral Services were held at Lyng & Tinney Funeral Home, 717 Jefferson Ave. Mr. Ratliff willed his body to Stanford Medical School for research.
The family prefers contributions to the American Cancer Society, 1517 South B St., San Mateo.
And in another article on March 25, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, A Valuable Citizen
It was no longer news to his friends when it appeared in Monday’s paper that Ralph H. Ratliff had succumbed. Mr. Ratliff had been stricken with cancer more than a year ago, and hope for survival disappeared long ago but Mr. Ratliff refused to give up.
He knew that there were many jobs to be done, and he was going to do his best to get some results while he was still able to do so.
Mr. Ratliff was one of the developers of an excellent ambulance for Peninsulans. He wasn’t merely satisfied to transport to the hospital; he became an expert in first aide and his careful handling of patients was in many cases the difference between life and death.
Mr. Ratliff didn’t confine himself to matter involving his own profession. He was civic minded, and in this too he put in his best effort. Hi thorough study of Redwood City’s street and traffic problems, made at the request of the Chamber of Commerce, has been used as a model by both city and county governments in planning for the future.
Much of his best work came after he knew that he would never be able to shake the cancer that was spreading through his body.
This effort and enthusiasm ….the will to keep working for the public’s benefit even while knowing that he would reap none of the benefits…made Ralph H. Ratliff one of Redwood City’s most valuable citizens.
The entire community shares with his family this deep loss.
The family tried to continue the business together, but as often happens in these situations, there was disagreement about how the business should be run, so Harold Ratliff established a competing service, California Ambulance.
Harold Ratliff in the California Ambulance Office about 1970
California Ambulance Service was moderately successful but the move by San Mateo County to station emergency medical responders to fire stations left only non-emergency transport work to private ambulance companies. Eventually, both Peninsula Ambulance Service and California Ambulance Service merged with Mercy Ambulance Service in Daly City to form Mercy-Peninsula Ambulance.
Irene Ratliff retired and moved to Oregon to be close to her children. Harold worked at Raychem in Menlo Park until his death on May 06, 1985. He died of a heart attack behind the wheel of his car on El Camino Real.
Times Tribune May 08, 1985
Harold Ratliff, 59, Known as “Ratliff the Magician” to scores of Peninsula children and church groups, and a resident of Redwood City for over 40 years, died Monday in Mills Memorial Hospital after a sudden illness. He was a native of San Francisco.
He was a Navy veteran of World War II and served in the Pacific. In recent years he worked for Raychem in Menlo Park.
As a magician he performed for churches, children’s parties and many organizations.
Survivors include his wife Carol, his wife of 37 years; his sons, Kenneth of San Jose and Donald and Robert of Oregon; daughters Donna Knerr of Texas, Sandra Ebaugh of Mountain View and Barbara Ferriera of Florida; brothers Ralph J. of Oregon and Ralph H. of Los Angeles; a sister, Virginia Collins of Pasadena; his mother, Irene Ratliff of Oregon.
Private services have been held with internment in Golden Gate National Cemetery at San Bruno under direction of the Redwood Chapel, Redwood City. The family suggests memorial gifts to the American Heart Association.
© Copyright 1996-2010 SFgenealogy. All rights reserved.
The vehicles in the lot are a mixture of Peninsula Ambulances and vehicles from the service station.
www.sfgenealogy.com/sanmateo/history/ambulance/smambulanc...
As remembered by
Michael Ratliff Lutz
Introduction:
When I began researching my family’s history in Redwood City, California in the year 2004 I was certain that I would be able to find a lot of information about my uncle, Ralph H. Ratliff since his death in March of 1963 was front-page news in The Redwood City Tribune. To my surprise, he was nearly a forgotten man. The local historical societies only had a couple of old newspaper clippings. I only had the clippings and photos that my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff (Lutz) (Womer), had saved in her scrapbook over the years to work with. With the help of a few relatives I have been able to reconstruct the story of Ralph Ratliff and his Peninsula Ambulance Service.
Ratliff Enterprises as described in a 1961 Redwood City Tribune article:
Twelve women in three shifts work around the clock with their fingers virtually on the pulse of a vast segment of professional and business life. These women answer a monthly average of 38,000 telephone calls.
They are employees of Ratliff Enterprises, Inc a family owner corporation occupying its own two-story building at 1260 Marshall Street. Ratliff Enterprises operates the Redwood City Telephone Answering Service, which embraces the Sequoia District Physicians Exchange. It also operates the Peninsula Ambulance Service and the Peninsula Hospital Rental Service. Its ambulances respond to 500 calls monthly. The County of San Mateo subsidizes peninsula Ambulance Service.
Its rental service rents out anything needed for the care of patients in the home…such things as oxygen, refrigerated tents, wheel chairs, therapy lamps, traction equipment and beds.
The officers of the corporation are Ralph H. Ratliff, president: his wife Irene I. Ratliff: vice president their two sons and a daughter, K. Harold Ratliff and Ralph J. Ratliff, and Mrs. Virginia Collins, directors. Mrs. Ratliff manages the answering service with Mrs. Collins as the assistant manager. Harold is the manager and bookkeeper of the ambulance and rental divisions.
Mateo County uses a subsidy system with Peninsula Ambulance Service so they could discontinue their own emergency ambulance service. If the company couldn’t collect from individuals, the county would reimburse them $20 per call for all service ordered through police systems. Most calls came through the Sheriffs Office.
In 1960 Peninsula Ambulance received a subsidy of $18,000, a considerable savings compared to what it would have cost to operate their own system. Ambulance employees were taught advanced Red Cross first aide, basic obstetrics and oxygen therapy.
As to obstetrics, Ralph Ratliff personally delivered 10 babies while working shifts with his ambulance crews, three of these births occurred in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. It just happened that 10 mothers waited until the very last minute. Unlike in the storybooks, none of the babies were named after him.
The ambulance fees are $25 per call plus supplies used at the accident scene like splints and oxygen, and $12.50 if a second patient on a stretcher was involved. A third person with minor injuries could ride with the driver for free.
I was able to find reports of two of those baby deliveries in the San Mateo Times archives, one in La Honda on July 14, 1949, and another in the back of the ambulance on August 21 1957. It is true that neither baby was named Ralph after my uncle, but then again, they were both girls.
Oops, I nearly missed the boy he delivered on July 2, 1954. He wasn’t named Ralph either.
Recent generations probably don’t realize that emergency medical service used to be provided by private ambulance companies. Until the late 1970s when EMTs were stationed in firehouses, private ambulance services like Peninsula Ambulance Service and Harold Ratliff’s California Ambulance Service would respond to medical emergencies. Ambulance personnel received advanced first aide training from the American Red Cross. In fact, Ralph Ratliff was a first aide instructor for the Red Cross for several years. The classes were taught at the Sequoia Chapter of the American Red Cross, 3540 Middlefield Road in Menlo Park. There were six, two-hour sessions taught in the evening, ending in a Red Cross certificate for those who passed the course.
I’m probably not the best person to tell the story of Peninsula Ambulance since my contact with this part of my family was rather inconsistent over the years. My mother was half owner of Home Creek Resort at Huntington lake in Fresno County so except for two years in 1951 and 1952 when we wintered over with Ralph Ratliff’s family in Redwood City, my contact was limited to a couple of weeks on vacation every year. In my senior high school year, 1962-63 we moved to Redwood City, but that was just a few months before my uncle died. There was a time when you couldn’t go anywhere in Redwood City without bumping into a member of the Ratliff family, but now it seems I’m the only one left. Fortunately, my mother saved numerous newspaper articles and photographs that should be helpful.
Ralph H. Ratliff was born in Tallula, Illinois on November 05, 1903 to George O. and Carrie Ratliff of Jacksonville, Illinois. The family, including his older brother Frank Jerry Ratliff, and younger sister and my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff later moved to Los Angeles then to San Francisco in the 1920s. My grandfather, George O. Ratliff was in the real estate business but Ralph found working on cars more to his liking, so for several years he worked as an auto mechanic in San Francisco.
Prior to leaving Los Angeles, Ralph had a brief marriage to Mildred Hensley, and a son Ralph H. Ratliff Jr., born October 14, 1922. Ralph Jr. moved to San Francisco with the rest of the family and was cared for by my mother and grandmother until Ralph married Irene I. Haseltine of Redwood City in Palo Alto, California on May 8, 1925. Their first son, Kenneth “Harold” Ratliff was born November 04, 1925. They had two additional children, Ralph Junior Ratliff, born January 25, 1927 and Virginia Lois Ratliff, born May 21, 1928.
Irene Haseltine was a Redwood City girl, her emigrated to Redwood City from Wisconsin in the early 1900s. Ralph and Irene Ratliff continued to live in San Francisco until 1939 when, with financial assistance from his father George Ratliff, he opened the Peninsula Garage in Redwood City.
The first location of the Peninsula Garage was near Bayshore Highway, near Main and Bradford today. This section of Bayshore is now Veteran’s Blvd. The location near the highway made it easier for both the towing business and the ambulance business to respond quickly. When they moved to 432 Middlefield Rd. they were about the same distance from the highway as they were at Main and Bradford. There were no freeways then. The highways all had stoplights at major intersections. Bayshore Highway had only two lanes in each direction with no center divider. There were very few buildings along old Bayshore but there were a lot of billboards
Towing was a large part of the Peninsula Garage business. It was the towing business that got Ralph Ratliff started in the ambulance business. Ralph’s tow trucks were arriving at auto accident scenes long before the ambulance arrived. In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, asked my uncle to provide the community with some kind of ambulance service. Ralph purchased a used ambulance from a taxicab company, took first aide classes, and went into business. It’s not clear why a taxi company had an ambulance.
At first the Peninsula Garage and Peninsula Ambulance coexisted at the same address at 450 Main St., Redwood City. They also shared the same phone number for a while which probably caused some confusion, but there is no record of a tow truck responding to an ambulance call.
During the early 1940s the Ratliff family lived on Oxford Street in Redwood City. Oxford Street was pretty much out in the country then. There were very few other houses around. Later they moved to a large white house at 432 Middlefield Rd. near the corner of old Bayshore Highway. That location is now a county parking lot. That house also served as the base for the ambulance service.
This article about my cousin Harold Ratliff’s wedding reception pretty much sums up the Ratliff family in Redwood City during World War 2. My mother was living with the Ratliff’s on Oxford Street then. My father was away in the army and I was just born a month before or so before the article was written so it was easier for her to live with relatives. I was at this reception but don’t remember much.
Ironically, I was born in San Francisco. My family was from San Francisco but by 1944 my grand parents had moved to Burlingame and my mother was living in Redwood City. They all decided to go to a fireworks display at Kezar stadium in 1944, and that’s when and where I was born.
Redwood City Tribune, August 1944:
A large wedding party and reception was held in honor of newly wedded Mr. and Mrs. Harold Kenneth Ratliff, the former Miss Virginia Alberta French of San Francisco, at the home of the groom’s grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Alva Haseltine of 479 Sequoia Ave. last week.
Because of Harold’s short leave from the navy, in which he is a seaman second class, the couple was married in Reno on Aug. 23. They met several years ago when Virginia visited her aunt, Mrs. Tom Kelly of Redwood City.
For her wedding the bride chose the navy colors of navy blue and white. She wore a navy blue suit with white accessories and a gardenia corsage.
Harold is the son of Mr. and Mrs. R.H. Ratliff of 1474 Oxford St. He is the brother of Ralph and Virginia Ratliff who attend Sequoia High School and Ralph Harold Ratliff Jr. who is now in the U.S. Army at Camp Haan. Harold also attended Sequoia High School.
At the reception the table was decorated in blue and white centered with a tiered wedding cake topped with a miniature sailor and his bride. Many gifts were received by the newlyweds.
Attending the reception were Mr. and Mrs. George Ratliff, grandparents of the groom, Mrs. Nina Mardel Lutz, aunt, and son Michael Lutz; Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Keyser, aunt and uncle, and cousins, Bonnie, Phillip and Jimmie Keyser; Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Haseltine, aunt and uncle, and Neal and Dale Haseltine; Mrs. Jasper Haseltine, aunt, and Joanne and Freddie Haseltine, and Sgt. and Mrs. Herbert England, cousins, and daughter, Sharon Lee.
Also attending were Sgt. and Mrs. John Whittington, Mr. and Mrs. Tony Alvis and sons, Mr. Norman Peterson and Kenneth Peterson, USN.
Unable to attend were Mr. Jasper Haseltine, uncle, who is now overseas with the merchant marine, Sgt. Eddie Thoemke of the U.S. Army, and Mrs. Thoemke, uncle and aunt; and Sgt. Richard Lutz, uncle, who is currently stationed in Roswell, New Mexico.
This is my cousin Virginia (Ginny) Ratliff behind their home at 1474 Oxford St in Redwood City about in the late 1940s. That area behind her would be covered with houses by 1950.
Unfortunately, Harold Ratliff’s Marriage to Virginia French only lasted a couple of years. He later married Carol Sufczynski Dierks of Redwood City on March 26,1949.
Around 1948 the Ratliff family and the business moved to a new location at 432 Middlefield Road, now a parking lot for the San Mateo County Offices. The garage was sold and they purchased an answering service, Sequoia District Physicians Exchange.
Both the businesses and the family occupied the same large house. The answering service occupied what was a large living room. Fortunately the house must have had two living rooms, because there was another room of equal size with a connecting door. The upstairs served as quarters for the ambulance crews.
There was enough room in the house to accommodate my mother and me the winters of 1951 and 1952 during the off-season for my mother’s business, Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake, CA. From November to March we lived in Redwood City. I attended Monroe School, and mom worked shifts at the answering service.
On October 08, 1949 my uncle Ralph was nearly killed in a three-car pile up on old Pacheco Pass. He was on his way to Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake in Fresno County. The resort was co-owned by my mother, and uncle Frank “Jerry” Ratliff. Every fall the family gathered at the resort during deer season. I can remember my uncle in what was nearly a full body cast lying in a hospital bed in the living room of that house on Middlefield.
Getting to Monroe School was an easy walk then because Bradford connected Middlefield Rd. and Allerton St. Ralph Junior Ratliff and his family lived at 730 Allerton diagonally across from Monroe School so they were available to point me in the right direction when I got lost my first day. In one of those little coincidences that happen now and then, my cousin’s landlady at 730 Allerton was Mrs. Mary Tesolin, the mother of Carmen Tesolin, my future wife, though I didn’t actually meet her until 1963. In 1955, my cousin Ralph Junior Ratliff and family lived in the old carriage house on property at 726-730 Allerton Street. It sat next to an old farmhouse also owned by Mary “Sironi” Tesolin, Carmen’s mother.
Both of Ralph Ratliff’s sons worked shifts for the ambulance service as well as working other jobs, so Ralph Jr. and Harold were always descending the stairs to raid the refrigerator. One of Harold’s sons, Kenny, also lived there. Ralph and Irene Ratliff assumed the responsibility of caring for Kenneth Ratliff after Harold’s divorce from his first wife Virginia. They continued to care for Kenny until he joined the Navy in 1965.
Kenny and I slept in the glassed in front porch of the house. I remember it being quite cold, especially since my aunt Irene insisted on an open window, even in mid winter. Something about the health benefits of fresh air. It was also noisy. The police radio was always on in the living room for some reason. I didn’t understand why the radio wasn’t upstairs with the ambulance guys. The house was also very close to Bayshore Highway, and there was a stop light at Middlefield and Bayshore. Trucks that stopped at the light had to rev up their engines to get moving again. On the other side were the trains. The tracks were, a few blocks away, but the trains ran all night. I don’t think I got a lotta sleep.
In the late 1950s Harold and Ralph Junior Ratliff purchased the Flying “A” service station at the corner of Middlefield and Bayshore. Ralph Sr. helped with the financing.
In 1959 Ralph Junior Ratliff left the business and eventually moved his family to Oregon leaving Harold Ratliff the sole owner of the business.
In the late 1950s the County of San Mateo decided it needed the block that housed both Peninsula Ambulance Service and Ratliff’s Flying “A” so the Ambulance Business moved to a new location, and built a new building at 1260 Marshall St., and Harold Ratliff rejoined the Ambulance Company. The building on Marshall is still there and currently occupied by Aloha Flowers (2005).
Before the Kaiser Medical Center was completed in 1968 we used to set off 4th of July fireworks in front of the Ambulance Service. Kaiser was virtually built in our front yard. During the 1960s while Kaiser was being built my entire family worked at 1260 Marshall. My uncle ran the businesses, my cousins drove ambulances, and my mother ran the medical supply for a while. My aunt ran Sequoia Physicians & Surgeons Exchange in the same building. I even worked there when I was in high school in 1963.
After I was discharged from the U.S. Navy in 1967 I used the skills that I learned as a hospital corpsman to moonlight for various ambulance services while I was attending San Francisco State University. The skills required by civilian ambulance employees were nearly identical to those skills used by a field medic (corpsman) with the U.S. Marines. I worked in the operating room at the old Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. That made it possible for me to moonlight some nights and weekends for Bob’s Ambulance Service in Oakland while still on active duty.
Often, history is what is going on in the background of a photograph so the following photographs not only show some vintage Peninsula Ambulances from the 1940s and 50s, but also shows a large facility that belonged to the Mobil Oil Company. The Mobil facility was directly across Middlefield from both Peninsula Ambulance and the Flying “A” station. You can also see a tower appears close but was actually several blocks away at Frank’s Tannery. Just across the Highway from the Flying “A” was the Redwood City Rodeo Grounds. That’s about where the Department of Motor Vehicles is located now.
In 1961 Ralph Ratliff was voted president of the California Ambulance Association. On September 6th of that same year the San Mateo Times reported that my uncle and a California Highway Patrol Officer named Fred Hagen climbed down a 400-foot cliff on Tunitas Road to rescue a 16-year-old boy who was thrown from a Jeep when it hit a tree. My uncle was 57 years old at the time and had several younger drivers on his payroll, but he enjoyed the work so much that he was still taking regular turns behind the wheel of the ambulance.
People forget that before Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and specialized rescue vehicles, ambulance services did it all. Peninsula Ambulance Service covered most of San Mateo County, from delivering a baby in La Honda to rescuing a teenager coastside. I remember hearing my uncle’s voice on the ambulance radio informing the hospital that he was coming in from Half Moon Bay with one up and two down. That meant that he had two patients on gurneys and one on a hammock like device used only in extreme emergencies.
In most cases there were no freeways, so when an ambulance was coming in from coastside, it was traveling narrow twisting roads often in the fog. Some of those roads are still no fun to drive today.
The old Five Points Hotel at 2015 El Camino Real was the location of frequent calls. There was always trouble and ambulance calls to that location were always seen as dangerous. My uncle used to always complain about employees being injured on calls to the hotel. Some of the legendary danger may have been exaggerated, but the Redwood City Police closed down the hotel in the early 1950s.
My uncle was credited with saving the life of a man whose throat had been cut in a knife fight in the “five points area” on January 17, 1955. Somehow he managed keep the man from bleeding to death from a severed jugular vein on the way to the hospital, this according to the San Mateo Times.
It wasn’t always people who were rescued. When a 16 year old boy hit a dog with his motor scooter in 1957, he not only delivered the boy with a broken leg to the hospital, but he also delivered the dog to a vet.
That same year Uncle Ralph had to descend on a sling from a crane into a concrete vat to rescue a worker with a fractured spine. The worker was a welder working on a Bayshore Freeway overpass when he leaned too far into the vat.
On May 17, 1962 Ralph Ratliff represented Redwood City at the annual hearing conducted by the California State Chamber of Commerce. The Issues were the completion of the Five Points Overpass, the Junipero Serra Freeway (280), the Skyline Freeway and the Bayfront Freeway (101). There was also resolution offered by the City of Half Moon Bay seeking to continue the so-called San Bruno Freeway (380) to Half Moon Bay.
I’m not sure where my uncle stood on the last issue. This was just a couple of years after the City of Pacifica was formed to keep from being annexed by San Bruno, and a couple of years before Pacifica tried to annex all of the communities of the coastside down to Princeton By the Sea. Development was popular then. There was even a plan to make Montara into another Linda Mar.
Unfortunately, his election to the new post came shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer. His death in March 1963 was front-page news in the Times Tribune on March 18, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, whose Peninsula Ambulance Service has provided Redwood City’s emergency transportation for 19 years died Saturday afternoon after a long battle with cancer. Mr. Ratliff, 59, came here in 1939 to establish a garage and towing service at the corner of Main Street and Old Bayshore.
In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, told Mr. Ratliff that the community should be provided with some kind of ambulance service. Mr. Ratliff decided to go into the business. He began with one vehicle and today, with headquarters at 1260 Marshall St., has five.
A native of Springfield [actually Tallula], Ill., Mr. Ratliff came to Redwood City from San Francisco. He has been identified with many civic activities throughout the years, notably as the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Highway and Traffic Committee. It was for this group that he campaigned for the widening of Jefferson Ave. and Woodside Rd., the extension of Edgewood Rd. to Half Moon Bay, and many of the local provisions of the local in the proposed city-county highway bond issue.
Mr. Ratliff also was a member of the Redwood City Exchange club, Redwood City Elks lodge, Modern Woodmen of the World and United Commercial Travelers. He was a charter member and past president of the California Ambulance Association, and was awarded a 20-year pin as a first aide instructor by the Red Cross.
Mr. Ratliff’s family will continue to run the ambulance firm.
Survivors include his widow, Irene, at the family home, 1007 Katherine St.; Sons Ralph J., Menlo Park and Harold K., Redwood City; a daughter; Mrs. Virginia Collins, Los Altos and a son by a previous marriage, Ralph H. Ratliff Jr. of Los Angeles. A Sister, Mrs. Mardel Womer [My mother’s married name with her second husband] resides in Redwood City. There are 15 grandchildren.
Private Funeral Services were held at Lyng & Tinney Funeral Home, 717 Jefferson Ave. Mr. Ratliff willed his body to Stanford Medical School for research.
The family prefers contributions to the American Cancer Society, 1517 South B St., San Mateo.
And in another article on March 25, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, A Valuable Citizen
It was no longer news to his friends when it appeared in Monday’s paper that Ralph H. Ratliff had succumbed. Mr. Ratliff had been stricken with cancer more than a year ago, and hope for survival disappeared long ago but Mr. Ratliff refused to give up.
He knew that there were many jobs to be done, and he was going to do his best to get some results while he was still able to do so.
Mr. Ratliff was one of the developers of an excellent ambulance for Peninsulans. He wasn’t merely satisfied to transport to the hospital; he became an expert in first aide and his careful handling of patients was in many cases the difference between life and death.
Mr. Ratliff didn’t confine himself to matter involving his own profession. He was civic minded, and in this too he put in his best effort. Hi thorough study of Redwood City’s street and traffic problems, made at the request of the Chamber of Commerce, has been used as a model by both city and county governments in planning for the future.
Much of his best work came after he knew that he would never be able to shake the cancer that was spreading through his body.
This effort and enthusiasm ….the will to keep working for the public’s benefit even while knowing that he would reap none of the benefits…made Ralph H. Ratliff one of Redwood City’s most valuable citizens.
The entire community shares with his family this deep loss.
The family tried to continue the business together, but as often happens in these situations, there was disagreement about how the business should be run, so Harold Ratliff established a competing service, California Ambulance.
Harold Ratliff in the California Ambulance Office about 1970
California Ambulance Service was moderately successful but the move by San Mateo County to station emergency medical responders to fire stations left only non-emergency transport work to private ambulance companies. Eventually, both Peninsula Ambulance Service and California Ambulance Service merged with Mercy Ambulance Service in Daly City to form Mercy-Peninsula Ambulance.
Irene Ratliff retired and moved to Oregon to be close to her children. Harold worked at Raychem in Menlo Park until his death on May 06, 1985. He died of a heart attack behind the wheel of his car on El Camino Real.
Times Tribune May 08, 1985
Harold Ratliff, 59, Known as “Ratliff the Magician” to scores of Peninsula children and church groups, and a resident of Redwood City for over 40 years, died Monday in Mills Memorial Hospital after a sudden illness. He was a native of San Francisco.
He was a Navy veteran of World War II and served in the Pacific. In recent years he worked for Raychem in Menlo Park.
As a magician he performed for churches, children’s parties and many organizations.
Survivors include his wife Carol, his wife of 37 years; his sons, Kenneth of San Jose and Donald and Robert of Oregon; daughters Donna Knerr of Texas, Sandra Ebaugh of Mountain View and Barbara Ferriera of Florida; brothers Ralph J. of Oregon and Ralph H. of Los Angeles; a sister, Virginia Collins of Pasadena; his mother, Irene Ratliff of Oregon.
Private services have been held with internment in Golden Gate National Cemetery at San Bruno under direction of the Redwood Chapel, Redwood City. The family suggests memorial gifts to the American Heart Association.
© Copyright 1996-2010 SFgenealogy. All rights reserved.
Ralph Ratliff taking delivery on a new ambulance about 1960. Ambulance purchase was an annual ritual. There were some price and tax benefits to picking up the ambulance at the factory, so once a year Ralph Sr. and one of his sons would fly to Detroit to pick up a new ambulance. Ambulances usually stayed in service for about five years.
www.sfgenealogy.com/sanmateo/history/ambulance/smambulanc...
As remembered by
Michael Ratliff Lutz
Introduction:
When I began researching my family’s history in Redwood City, California in the year 2004 I was certain that I would be able to find a lot of information about my uncle, Ralph H. Ratliff since his death in March of 1963 was front-page news in The Redwood City Tribune. To my surprise, he was nearly a forgotten man. The local historical societies only had a couple of old newspaper clippings. I only had the clippings and photos that my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff (Lutz) (Womer), had saved in her scrapbook over the years to work with. With the help of a few relatives I have been able to reconstruct the story of Ralph Ratliff and his Peninsula Ambulance Service.
Ratliff Enterprises as described in a 1961 Redwood City Tribune article:
Twelve women in three shifts work around the clock with their fingers virtually on the pulse of a vast segment of professional and business life. These women answer a monthly average of 38,000 telephone calls.
They are employees of Ratliff Enterprises, Inc a family owner corporation occupying its own two-story building at 1260 Marshall Street. Ratliff Enterprises operates the Redwood City Telephone Answering Service, which embraces the Sequoia District Physicians Exchange. It also operates the Peninsula Ambulance Service and the Peninsula Hospital Rental Service. Its ambulances respond to 500 calls monthly. The County of San Mateo subsidizes peninsula Ambulance Service.
Its rental service rents out anything needed for the care of patients in the home…such things as oxygen, refrigerated tents, wheel chairs, therapy lamps, traction equipment and beds.
The officers of the corporation are Ralph H. Ratliff, president: his wife Irene I. Ratliff: vice president their two sons and a daughter, K. Harold Ratliff and Ralph J. Ratliff, and Mrs. Virginia Collins, directors. Mrs. Ratliff manages the answering service with Mrs. Collins as the assistant manager. Harold is the manager and bookkeeper of the ambulance and rental divisions.
Mateo County uses a subsidy system with Peninsula Ambulance Service so they could discontinue their own emergency ambulance service. If the company couldn’t collect from individuals, the county would reimburse them $20 per call for all service ordered through police systems. Most calls came through the Sheriffs Office.
In 1960 Peninsula Ambulance received a subsidy of $18,000, a considerable savings compared to what it would have cost to operate their own system. Ambulance employees were taught advanced Red Cross first aide, basic obstetrics and oxygen therapy.
As to obstetrics, Ralph Ratliff personally delivered 10 babies while working shifts with his ambulance crews, three of these births occurred in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. It just happened that 10 mothers waited until the very last minute. Unlike in the storybooks, none of the babies were named after him.
The ambulance fees are $25 per call plus supplies used at the accident scene like splints and oxygen, and $12.50 if a second patient on a stretcher was involved. A third person with minor injuries could ride with the driver for free.
I was able to find reports of two of those baby deliveries in the San Mateo Times archives, one in La Honda on July 14, 1949, and another in the back of the ambulance on August 21 1957. It is true that neither baby was named Ralph after my uncle, but then again, they were both girls.
Oops, I nearly missed the boy he delivered on July 2, 1954. He wasn’t named Ralph either.
Recent generations probably don’t realize that emergency medical service used to be provided by private ambulance companies. Until the late 1970s when EMTs were stationed in firehouses, private ambulance services like Peninsula Ambulance Service and Harold Ratliff’s California Ambulance Service would respond to medical emergencies. Ambulance personnel received advanced first aide training from the American Red Cross. In fact, Ralph Ratliff was a first aide instructor for the Red Cross for several years. The classes were taught at the Sequoia Chapter of the American Red Cross, 3540 Middlefield Road in Menlo Park. There were six, two-hour sessions taught in the evening, ending in a Red Cross certificate for those who passed the course.
I’m probably not the best person to tell the story of Peninsula Ambulance since my contact with this part of my family was rather inconsistent over the years. My mother was half owner of Home Creek Resort at Huntington lake in Fresno County so except for two years in 1951 and 1952 when we wintered over with Ralph Ratliff’s family in Redwood City, my contact was limited to a couple of weeks on vacation every year. In my senior high school year, 1962-63 we moved to Redwood City, but that was just a few months before my uncle died. There was a time when you couldn’t go anywhere in Redwood City without bumping into a member of the Ratliff family, but now it seems I’m the only one left. Fortunately, my mother saved numerous newspaper articles and photographs that should be helpful.
Ralph H. Ratliff was born in Tallula, Illinois on November 05, 1903 to George O. and Carrie Ratliff of Jacksonville, Illinois. The family, including his older brother Frank Jerry Ratliff, and younger sister and my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff later moved to Los Angeles then to San Francisco in the 1920s. My grandfather, George O. Ratliff was in the real estate business but Ralph found working on cars more to his liking, so for several years he worked as an auto mechanic in San Francisco.
Prior to leaving Los Angeles, Ralph had a brief marriage to Mildred Hensley, and a son Ralph H. Ratliff Jr., born October 14, 1922. Ralph Jr. moved to San Francisco with the rest of the family and was cared for by my mother and grandmother until Ralph married Irene I. Haseltine of Redwood City in Palo Alto, California on May 8, 1925. Their first son, Kenneth “Harold” Ratliff was born November 04, 1925. They had two additional children, Ralph Junior Ratliff, born January 25, 1927 and Virginia Lois Ratliff, born May 21, 1928.
Irene Haseltine was a Redwood City girl, her emigrated to Redwood City from Wisconsin in the early 1900s. Ralph and Irene Ratliff continued to live in San Francisco until 1939 when, with financial assistance from his father George Ratliff, he opened the Peninsula Garage in Redwood City.
The first location of the Peninsula Garage was near Bayshore Highway, near Main and Bradford today. This section of Bayshore is now Veteran’s Blvd. The location near the highway made it easier for both the towing business and the ambulance business to respond quickly. When they moved to 432 Middlefield Rd. they were about the same distance from the highway as they were at Main and Bradford. There were no freeways then. The highways all had stoplights at major intersections. Bayshore Highway had only two lanes in each direction with no center divider. There were very few buildings along old Bayshore but there were a lot of billboards
Towing was a large part of the Peninsula Garage business. It was the towing business that got Ralph Ratliff started in the ambulance business. Ralph’s tow trucks were arriving at auto accident scenes long before the ambulance arrived. In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, asked my uncle to provide the community with some kind of ambulance service. Ralph purchased a used ambulance from a taxicab company, took first aide classes, and went into business. It’s not clear why a taxi company had an ambulance.
At first the Peninsula Garage and Peninsula Ambulance coexisted at the same address at 450 Main St., Redwood City. They also shared the same phone number for a while which probably caused some confusion, but there is no record of a tow truck responding to an ambulance call.
During the early 1940s the Ratliff family lived on Oxford Street in Redwood City. Oxford Street was pretty much out in the country then. There were very few other houses around. Later they moved to a large white house at 432 Middlefield Rd. near the corner of old Bayshore Highway. That location is now a county parking lot. That house also served as the base for the ambulance service.
This article about my cousin Harold Ratliff’s wedding reception pretty much sums up the Ratliff family in Redwood City during World War 2. My mother was living with the Ratliff’s on Oxford Street then. My father was away in the army and I was just born a month before or so before the article was written so it was easier for her to live with relatives. I was at this reception but don’t remember much.
Ironically, I was born in San Francisco. My family was from San Francisco but by 1944 my grand parents had moved to Burlingame and my mother was living in Redwood City. They all decided to go to a fireworks display at Kezar stadium in 1944, and that’s when and where I was born.
Redwood City Tribune, August 1944:
A large wedding party and reception was held in honor of newly wedded Mr. and Mrs. Harold Kenneth Ratliff, the former Miss Virginia Alberta French of San Francisco, at the home of the groom’s grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Alva Haseltine of 479 Sequoia Ave. last week.
Because of Harold’s short leave from the navy, in which he is a seaman second class, the couple was married in Reno on Aug. 23. They met several years ago when Virginia visited her aunt, Mrs. Tom Kelly of Redwood City.
For her wedding the bride chose the navy colors of navy blue and white. She wore a navy blue suit with white accessories and a gardenia corsage.
Harold is the son of Mr. and Mrs. R.H. Ratliff of 1474 Oxford St. He is the brother of Ralph and Virginia Ratliff who attend Sequoia High School and Ralph Harold Ratliff Jr. who is now in the U.S. Army at Camp Haan. Harold also attended Sequoia High School.
At the reception the table was decorated in blue and white centered with a tiered wedding cake topped with a miniature sailor and his bride. Many gifts were received by the newlyweds.
Attending the reception were Mr. and Mrs. George Ratliff, grandparents of the groom, Mrs. Nina Mardel Lutz, aunt, and son Michael Lutz; Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Keyser, aunt and uncle, and cousins, Bonnie, Phillip and Jimmie Keyser; Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Haseltine, aunt and uncle, and Neal and Dale Haseltine; Mrs. Jasper Haseltine, aunt, and Joanne and Freddie Haseltine, and Sgt. and Mrs. Herbert England, cousins, and daughter, Sharon Lee.
Also attending were Sgt. and Mrs. John Whittington, Mr. and Mrs. Tony Alvis and sons, Mr. Norman Peterson and Kenneth Peterson, USN.
Unable to attend were Mr. Jasper Haseltine, uncle, who is now overseas with the merchant marine, Sgt. Eddie Thoemke of the U.S. Army, and Mrs. Thoemke, uncle and aunt; and Sgt. Richard Lutz, uncle, who is currently stationed in Roswell, New Mexico.
This is my cousin Virginia (Ginny) Ratliff behind their home at 1474 Oxford St in Redwood City about in the late 1940s. That area behind her would be covered with houses by 1950.
Unfortunately, Harold Ratliff’s Marriage to Virginia French only lasted a couple of years. He later married Carol Sufczynski Dierks of Redwood City on March 26,1949.
Around 1948 the Ratliff family and the business moved to a new location at 432 Middlefield Road, now a parking lot for the San Mateo County Offices. The garage was sold and they purchased an answering service, Sequoia District Physicians Exchange.
Both the businesses and the family occupied the same large house. The answering service occupied what was a large living room. Fortunately the house must have had two living rooms, because there was another room of equal size with a connecting door. The upstairs served as quarters for the ambulance crews.
There was enough room in the house to accommodate my mother and me the winters of 1951 and 1952 during the off-season for my mother’s business, Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake, CA. From November to March we lived in Redwood City. I attended Monroe School, and mom worked shifts at the answering service.
On October 08, 1949 my uncle Ralph was nearly killed in a three-car pile up on old Pacheco Pass. He was on his way to Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake in Fresno County. The resort was co-owned by my mother, and uncle Frank “Jerry” Ratliff. Every fall the family gathered at the resort during deer season. I can remember my uncle in what was nearly a full body cast lying in a hospital bed in the living room of that house on Middlefield.
Getting to Monroe School was an easy walk then because Bradford connected Middlefield Rd. and Allerton St. Ralph Junior Ratliff and his family lived at 730 Allerton diagonally across from Monroe School so they were available to point me in the right direction when I got lost my first day. In one of those little coincidences that happen now and then, my cousin’s landlady at 730 Allerton was Mrs. Mary Tesolin, the mother of Carmen Tesolin, my future wife, though I didn’t actually meet her until 1963. In 1955, my cousin Ralph Junior Ratliff and family lived in the old carriage house on property at 726-730 Allerton Street. It sat next to an old farmhouse also owned by Mary “Sironi” Tesolin, Carmen’s mother.
Both of Ralph Ratliff’s sons worked shifts for the ambulance service as well as working other jobs, so Ralph Jr. and Harold were always descending the stairs to raid the refrigerator. One of Harold’s sons, Kenny, also lived there. Ralph and Irene Ratliff assumed the responsibility of caring for Kenneth Ratliff after Harold’s divorce from his first wife Virginia. They continued to care for Kenny until he joined the Navy in 1965.
Kenny and I slept in the glassed in front porch of the house. I remember it being quite cold, especially since my aunt Irene insisted on an open window, even in mid winter. Something about the health benefits of fresh air. It was also noisy. The police radio was always on in the living room for some reason. I didn’t understand why the radio wasn’t upstairs with the ambulance guys. The house was also very close to Bayshore Highway, and there was a stop light at Middlefield and Bayshore. Trucks that stopped at the light had to rev up their engines to get moving again. On the other side were the trains. The tracks were, a few blocks away, but the trains ran all night. I don’t think I got a lotta sleep.
In the late 1950s Harold and Ralph Junior Ratliff purchased the Flying “A” service station at the corner of Middlefield and Bayshore. Ralph Sr. helped with the financing.
In 1959 Ralph Junior Ratliff left the business and eventually moved his family to Oregon leaving Harold Ratliff the sole owner of the business.
In the late 1950s the County of San Mateo decided it needed the block that housed both Peninsula Ambulance Service and Ratliff’s Flying “A” so the Ambulance Business moved to a new location, and built a new building at 1260 Marshall St., and Harold Ratliff rejoined the Ambulance Company. The building on Marshall is still there and currently occupied by Aloha Flowers (2005).
Before the Kaiser Medical Center was completed in 1968 we used to set off 4th of July fireworks in front of the Ambulance Service. Kaiser was virtually built in our front yard. During the 1960s while Kaiser was being built my entire family worked at 1260 Marshall. My uncle ran the businesses, my cousins drove ambulances, and my mother ran the medical supply for a while. My aunt ran Sequoia Physicians & Surgeons Exchange in the same building. I even worked there when I was in high school in 1963.
After I was discharged from the U.S. Navy in 1967 I used the skills that I learned as a hospital corpsman to moonlight for various ambulance services while I was attending San Francisco State University. The skills required by civilian ambulance employees were nearly identical to those skills used by a field medic (corpsman) with the U.S. Marines. I worked in the operating room at the old Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. That made it possible for me to moonlight some nights and weekends for Bob’s Ambulance Service in Oakland while still on active duty.
Often, history is what is going on in the background of a photograph so the following photographs not only show some vintage Peninsula Ambulances from the 1940s and 50s, but also shows a large facility that belonged to the Mobil Oil Company. The Mobil facility was directly across Middlefield from both Peninsula Ambulance and the Flying “A” station. You can also see a tower appears close but was actually several blocks away at Frank’s Tannery. Just across the Highway from the Flying “A” was the Redwood City Rodeo Grounds. That’s about where the Department of Motor Vehicles is located now.
In 1961 Ralph Ratliff was voted president of the California Ambulance Association. On September 6th of that same year the San Mateo Times reported that my uncle and a California Highway Patrol Officer named Fred Hagen climbed down a 400-foot cliff on Tunitas Road to rescue a 16-year-old boy who was thrown from a Jeep when it hit a tree. My uncle was 57 years old at the time and had several younger drivers on his payroll, but he enjoyed the work so much that he was still taking regular turns behind the wheel of the ambulance.
People forget that before Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and specialized rescue vehicles, ambulance services did it all. Peninsula Ambulance Service covered most of San Mateo County, from delivering a baby in La Honda to rescuing a teenager coastside. I remember hearing my uncle’s voice on the ambulance radio informing the hospital that he was coming in from Half Moon Bay with one up and two down. That meant that he had two patients on gurneys and one on a hammock like device used only in extreme emergencies.
In most cases there were no freeways, so when an ambulance was coming in from coastside, it was traveling narrow twisting roads often in the fog. Some of those roads are still no fun to drive today.
The old Five Points Hotel at 2015 El Camino Real was the location of frequent calls. There was always trouble and ambulance calls to that location were always seen as dangerous. My uncle used to always complain about employees being injured on calls to the hotel. Some of the legendary danger may have been exaggerated, but the Redwood City Police closed down the hotel in the early 1950s.
My uncle was credited with saving the life of a man whose throat had been cut in a knife fight in the “five points area” on January 17, 1955. Somehow he managed keep the man from bleeding to death from a severed jugular vein on the way to the hospital, this according to the San Mateo Times.
It wasn’t always people who were rescued. When a 16 year old boy hit a dog with his motor scooter in 1957, he not only delivered the boy with a broken leg to the hospital, but he also delivered the dog to a vet.
That same year Uncle Ralph had to descend on a sling from a crane into a concrete vat to rescue a worker with a fractured spine. The worker was a welder working on a Bayshore Freeway overpass when he leaned too far into the vat.
On May 17, 1962 Ralph Ratliff represented Redwood City at the annual hearing conducted by the California State Chamber of Commerce. The Issues were the completion of the Five Points Overpass, the Junipero Serra Freeway (280), the Skyline Freeway and the Bayfront Freeway (101). There was also resolution offered by the City of Half Moon Bay seeking to continue the so-called San Bruno Freeway (380) to Half Moon Bay.
I’m not sure where my uncle stood on the last issue. This was just a couple of years after the City of Pacifica was formed to keep from being annexed by San Bruno, and a couple of years before Pacifica tried to annex all of the communities of the coastside down to Princeton By the Sea. Development was popular then. There was even a plan to make Montara into another Linda Mar.
Unfortunately, his election to the new post came shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer. His death in March 1963 was front-page news in the Times Tribune on March 18, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, whose Peninsula Ambulance Service has provided Redwood City’s emergency transportation for 19 years died Saturday afternoon after a long battle with cancer. Mr. Ratliff, 59, came here in 1939 to establish a garage and towing service at the corner of Main Street and Old Bayshore.
In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, told Mr. Ratliff that the community should be provided with some kind of ambulance service. Mr. Ratliff decided to go into the business. He began with one vehicle and today, with headquarters at 1260 Marshall St., has five.
A native of Springfield [actually Tallula], Ill., Mr. Ratliff came to Redwood City from San Francisco. He has been identified with many civic activities throughout the years, notably as the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Highway and Traffic Committee. It was for this group that he campaigned for the widening of Jefferson Ave. and Woodside Rd., the extension of Edgewood Rd. to Half Moon Bay, and many of the local provisions of the local in the proposed city-county highway bond issue.
Mr. Ratliff also was a member of the Redwood City Exchange club, Redwood City Elks lodge, Modern Woodmen of the World and United Commercial Travelers. He was a charter member and past president of the California Ambulance Association, and was awarded a 20-year pin as a first aide instructor by the Red Cross.
Mr. Ratliff’s family will continue to run the ambulance firm.
Survivors include his widow, Irene, at the family home, 1007 Katherine St.; Sons Ralph J., Menlo Park and Harold K., Redwood City; a daughter; Mrs. Virginia Collins, Los Altos and a son by a previous marriage, Ralph H. Ratliff Jr. of Los Angeles. A Sister, Mrs. Mardel Womer [My mother’s married name with her second husband] resides in Redwood City. There are 15 grandchildren.
Private Funeral Services were held at Lyng & Tinney Funeral Home, 717 Jefferson Ave. Mr. Ratliff willed his body to Stanford Medical School for research.
The family prefers contributions to the American Cancer Society, 1517 South B St., San Mateo.
And in another article on March 25, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, A Valuable Citizen
It was no longer news to his friends when it appeared in Monday’s paper that Ralph H. Ratliff had succumbed. Mr. Ratliff had been stricken with cancer more than a year ago, and hope for survival disappeared long ago but Mr. Ratliff refused to give up.
He knew that there were many jobs to be done, and he was going to do his best to get some results while he was still able to do so.
Mr. Ratliff was one of the developers of an excellent ambulance for Peninsulans. He wasn’t merely satisfied to transport to the hospital; he became an expert in first aide and his careful handling of patients was in many cases the difference between life and death.
Mr. Ratliff didn’t confine himself to matter involving his own profession. He was civic minded, and in this too he put in his best effort. Hi thorough study of Redwood City’s street and traffic problems, made at the request of the Chamber of Commerce, has been used as a model by both city and county governments in planning for the future.
Much of his best work came after he knew that he would never be able to shake the cancer that was spreading through his body.
This effort and enthusiasm ….the will to keep working for the public’s benefit even while knowing that he would reap none of the benefits…made Ralph H. Ratliff one of Redwood City’s most valuable citizens.
The entire community shares with his family this deep loss.
The family tried to continue the business together, but as often happens in these situations, there was disagreement about how the business should be run, so Harold Ratliff established a competing service, California Ambulance.
Harold Ratliff in the California Ambulance Office about 1970
California Ambulance Service was moderately successful but the move by San Mateo County to station emergency medical responders to fire stations left only non-emergency transport work to private ambulance companies. Eventually, both Peninsula Ambulance Service and California Ambulance Service merged with Mercy Ambulance Service in Daly City to form Mercy-Peninsula Ambulance.
Irene Ratliff retired and moved to Oregon to be close to her children. Harold worked at Raychem in Menlo Park until his death on May 06, 1985. He died of a heart attack behind the wheel of his car on El Camino Real.
Times Tribune May 08, 1985
Harold Ratliff, 59, Known as “Ratliff the Magician” to scores of Peninsula children and church groups, and a resident of Redwood City for over 40 years, died Monday in Mills Memorial Hospital after a sudden illness. He was a native of San Francisco.
He was a Navy veteran of World War II and served in the Pacific. In recent years he worked for Raychem in Menlo Park.
As a magician he performed for churches, children’s parties and many organizations.
Survivors include his wife Carol, his wife of 37 years; his sons, Kenneth of San Jose and Donald and Robert of Oregon; daughters Donna Knerr of Texas, Sandra Ebaugh of Mountain View and Barbara Ferriera of Florida; brothers Ralph J. of Oregon and Ralph H. of Los Angeles; a sister, Virginia Collins of Pasadena; his mother, Irene Ratliff of Oregon.
Private services have been held with internment in Golden Gate National Cemetery at San Bruno under direction of the Redwood Chapel, Redwood City. The family suggests memorial gifts to the American Heart Association.
© Copyright 1996-2010 SFgenealogy. All rights reserved.
I took these photos inside the infectious ward of the Karol Jonschers Children's Hospital, Poznań. It was a time when epidemic armageddon caused by RSV and the next wave of covid was going through pediatric wards. All isolation rooms were then occupied by infected children under the care of a parent. In the corridor there are rows of cardboard boxes with overalls, spare beds. Some kids were treated with oxygen. Less than 2-year-old kid subjected to high-flow oxygen therapy. Only there were fewer ventilators here than in adults. But they also happened.
The photos would not have been made without help and kindness from the crew of Department VIII. Special thanks are due to prof. dr hab. n. med. Magdalena Figlerowicz and Karolina Samarzewska, MA, who agreed to the presence of a annoying man with a camera in their clinic.
Autmn/winter 22/23. Poznań, PL.
Peninsula Ambulance, maybe in the early 1950s. That’s the Mobil Oil complex. It was across the street from the ambulance service.
www.sfgenealogy.com/sanmateo/history/ambulance/smambulanc...
As remembered by
Michael Ratliff Lutz
Introduction:
When I began researching my family’s history in Redwood City, California in the year 2004 I was certain that I would be able to find a lot of information about my uncle, Ralph H. Ratliff since his death in March of 1963 was front-page news in The Redwood City Tribune. To my surprise, he was nearly a forgotten man. The local historical societies only had a couple of old newspaper clippings. I only had the clippings and photos that my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff (Lutz) (Womer), had saved in her scrapbook over the years to work with. With the help of a few relatives I have been able to reconstruct the story of Ralph Ratliff and his Peninsula Ambulance Service.
Ratliff Enterprises as described in a 1961 Redwood City Tribune article:
Twelve women in three shifts work around the clock with their fingers virtually on the pulse of a vast segment of professional and business life. These women answer a monthly average of 38,000 telephone calls.
They are employees of Ratliff Enterprises, Inc a family owner corporation occupying its own two-story building at 1260 Marshall Street. Ratliff Enterprises operates the Redwood City Telephone Answering Service, which embraces the Sequoia District Physicians Exchange. It also operates the Peninsula Ambulance Service and the Peninsula Hospital Rental Service. Its ambulances respond to 500 calls monthly. The County of San Mateo subsidizes peninsula Ambulance Service.
Its rental service rents out anything needed for the care of patients in the home…such things as oxygen, refrigerated tents, wheel chairs, therapy lamps, traction equipment and beds.
The officers of the corporation are Ralph H. Ratliff, president: his wife Irene I. Ratliff: vice president their two sons and a daughter, K. Harold Ratliff and Ralph J. Ratliff, and Mrs. Virginia Collins, directors. Mrs. Ratliff manages the answering service with Mrs. Collins as the assistant manager. Harold is the manager and bookkeeper of the ambulance and rental divisions.
Mateo County uses a subsidy system with Peninsula Ambulance Service so they could discontinue their own emergency ambulance service. If the company couldn’t collect from individuals, the county would reimburse them $20 per call for all service ordered through police systems. Most calls came through the Sheriffs Office.
In 1960 Peninsula Ambulance received a subsidy of $18,000, a considerable savings compared to what it would have cost to operate their own system. Ambulance employees were taught advanced Red Cross first aide, basic obstetrics and oxygen therapy.
As to obstetrics, Ralph Ratliff personally delivered 10 babies while working shifts with his ambulance crews, three of these births occurred in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. It just happened that 10 mothers waited until the very last minute. Unlike in the storybooks, none of the babies were named after him.
The ambulance fees are $25 per call plus supplies used at the accident scene like splints and oxygen, and $12.50 if a second patient on a stretcher was involved. A third person with minor injuries could ride with the driver for free.
I was able to find reports of two of those baby deliveries in the San Mateo Times archives, one in La Honda on July 14, 1949, and another in the back of the ambulance on August 21 1957. It is true that neither baby was named Ralph after my uncle, but then again, they were both girls.
Oops, I nearly missed the boy he delivered on July 2, 1954. He wasn’t named Ralph either.
Recent generations probably don’t realize that emergency medical service used to be provided by private ambulance companies. Until the late 1970s when EMTs were stationed in firehouses, private ambulance services like Peninsula Ambulance Service and Harold Ratliff’s California Ambulance Service would respond to medical emergencies. Ambulance personnel received advanced first aide training from the American Red Cross. In fact, Ralph Ratliff was a first aide instructor for the Red Cross for several years. The classes were taught at the Sequoia Chapter of the American Red Cross, 3540 Middlefield Road in Menlo Park. There were six, two-hour sessions taught in the evening, ending in a Red Cross certificate for those who passed the course.
I’m probably not the best person to tell the story of Peninsula Ambulance since my contact with this part of my family was rather inconsistent over the years. My mother was half owner of Home Creek Resort at Huntington lake in Fresno County so except for two years in 1951 and 1952 when we wintered over with Ralph Ratliff’s family in Redwood City, my contact was limited to a couple of weeks on vacation every year. In my senior high school year, 1962-63 we moved to Redwood City, but that was just a few months before my uncle died. There was a time when you couldn’t go anywhere in Redwood City without bumping into a member of the Ratliff family, but now it seems I’m the only one left. Fortunately, my mother saved numerous newspaper articles and photographs that should be helpful.
Ralph H. Ratliff was born in Tallula, Illinois on November 05, 1903 to George O. and Carrie Ratliff of Jacksonville, Illinois. The family, including his older brother Frank Jerry Ratliff, and younger sister and my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff later moved to Los Angeles then to San Francisco in the 1920s. My grandfather, George O. Ratliff was in the real estate business but Ralph found working on cars more to his liking, so for several years he worked as an auto mechanic in San Francisco.
Prior to leaving Los Angeles, Ralph had a brief marriage to Mildred Hensley, and a son Ralph H. Ratliff Jr., born October 14, 1922. Ralph Jr. moved to San Francisco with the rest of the family and was cared for by my mother and grandmother until Ralph married Irene I. Haseltine of Redwood City in Palo Alto, California on May 8, 1925. Their first son, Kenneth “Harold” Ratliff was born November 04, 1925. They had two additional children, Ralph Junior Ratliff, born January 25, 1927 and Virginia Lois Ratliff, born May 21, 1928.
Irene Haseltine was a Redwood City girl, her emigrated to Redwood City from Wisconsin in the early 1900s. Ralph and Irene Ratliff continued to live in San Francisco until 1939 when, with financial assistance from his father George Ratliff, he opened the Peninsula Garage in Redwood City.
The first location of the Peninsula Garage was near Bayshore Highway, near Main and Bradford today. This section of Bayshore is now Veteran’s Blvd. The location near the highway made it easier for both the towing business and the ambulance business to respond quickly. When they moved to 432 Middlefield Rd. they were about the same distance from the highway as they were at Main and Bradford. There were no freeways then. The highways all had stoplights at major intersections. Bayshore Highway had only two lanes in each direction with no center divider. There were very few buildings along old Bayshore but there were a lot of billboards
Towing was a large part of the Peninsula Garage business. It was the towing business that got Ralph Ratliff started in the ambulance business. Ralph’s tow trucks were arriving at auto accident scenes long before the ambulance arrived. In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, asked my uncle to provide the community with some kind of ambulance service. Ralph purchased a used ambulance from a taxicab company, took first aide classes, and went into business. It’s not clear why a taxi company had an ambulance.
At first the Peninsula Garage and Peninsula Ambulance coexisted at the same address at 450 Main St., Redwood City. They also shared the same phone number for a while which probably caused some confusion, but there is no record of a tow truck responding to an ambulance call.
During the early 1940s the Ratliff family lived on Oxford Street in Redwood City. Oxford Street was pretty much out in the country then. There were very few other houses around. Later they moved to a large white house at 432 Middlefield Rd. near the corner of old Bayshore Highway. That location is now a county parking lot. That house also served as the base for the ambulance service.
This article about my cousin Harold Ratliff’s wedding reception pretty much sums up the Ratliff family in Redwood City during World War 2. My mother was living with the Ratliff’s on Oxford Street then. My father was away in the army and I was just born a month before or so before the article was written so it was easier for her to live with relatives. I was at this reception but don’t remember much.
Ironically, I was born in San Francisco. My family was from San Francisco but by 1944 my grand parents had moved to Burlingame and my mother was living in Redwood City. They all decided to go to a fireworks display at Kezar stadium in 1944, and that’s when and where I was born.
Redwood City Tribune, August 1944:
A large wedding party and reception was held in honor of newly wedded Mr. and Mrs. Harold Kenneth Ratliff, the former Miss Virginia Alberta French of San Francisco, at the home of the groom’s grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Alva Haseltine of 479 Sequoia Ave. last week.
Because of Harold’s short leave from the navy, in which he is a seaman second class, the couple was married in Reno on Aug. 23. They met several years ago when Virginia visited her aunt, Mrs. Tom Kelly of Redwood City.
For her wedding the bride chose the navy colors of navy blue and white. She wore a navy blue suit with white accessories and a gardenia corsage.
Harold is the son of Mr. and Mrs. R.H. Ratliff of 1474 Oxford St. He is the brother of Ralph and Virginia Ratliff who attend Sequoia High School and Ralph Harold Ratliff Jr. who is now in the U.S. Army at Camp Haan. Harold also attended Sequoia High School.
At the reception the table was decorated in blue and white centered with a tiered wedding cake topped with a miniature sailor and his bride. Many gifts were received by the newlyweds.
Attending the reception were Mr. and Mrs. George Ratliff, grandparents of the groom, Mrs. Nina Mardel Lutz, aunt, and son Michael Lutz; Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Keyser, aunt and uncle, and cousins, Bonnie, Phillip and Jimmie Keyser; Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Haseltine, aunt and uncle, and Neal and Dale Haseltine; Mrs. Jasper Haseltine, aunt, and Joanne and Freddie Haseltine, and Sgt. and Mrs. Herbert England, cousins, and daughter, Sharon Lee.
Also attending were Sgt. and Mrs. John Whittington, Mr. and Mrs. Tony Alvis and sons, Mr. Norman Peterson and Kenneth Peterson, USN.
Unable to attend were Mr. Jasper Haseltine, uncle, who is now overseas with the merchant marine, Sgt. Eddie Thoemke of the U.S. Army, and Mrs. Thoemke, uncle and aunt; and Sgt. Richard Lutz, uncle, who is currently stationed in Roswell, New Mexico.
This is my cousin Virginia (Ginny) Ratliff behind their home at 1474 Oxford St in Redwood City about in the late 1940s. That area behind her would be covered with houses by 1950.
Unfortunately, Harold Ratliff’s Marriage to Virginia French only lasted a couple of years. He later married Carol Sufczynski Dierks of Redwood City on March 26,1949.
Around 1948 the Ratliff family and the business moved to a new location at 432 Middlefield Road, now a parking lot for the San Mateo County Offices. The garage was sold and they purchased an answering service, Sequoia District Physicians Exchange.
Both the businesses and the family occupied the same large house. The answering service occupied what was a large living room. Fortunately the house must have had two living rooms, because there was another room of equal size with a connecting door. The upstairs served as quarters for the ambulance crews.
There was enough room in the house to accommodate my mother and me the winters of 1951 and 1952 during the off-season for my mother’s business, Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake, CA. From November to March we lived in Redwood City. I attended Monroe School, and mom worked shifts at the answering service.
On October 08, 1949 my uncle Ralph was nearly killed in a three-car pile up on old Pacheco Pass. He was on his way to Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake in Fresno County. The resort was co-owned by my mother, and uncle Frank “Jerry” Ratliff. Every fall the family gathered at the resort during deer season. I can remember my uncle in what was nearly a full body cast lying in a hospital bed in the living room of that house on Middlefield.
Getting to Monroe School was an easy walk then because Bradford connected Middlefield Rd. and Allerton St. Ralph Junior Ratliff and his family lived at 730 Allerton diagonally across from Monroe School so they were available to point me in the right direction when I got lost my first day. In one of those little coincidences that happen now and then, my cousin’s landlady at 730 Allerton was Mrs. Mary Tesolin, the mother of Carmen Tesolin, my future wife, though I didn’t actually meet her until 1963. In 1955, my cousin Ralph Junior Ratliff and family lived in the old carriage house on property at 726-730 Allerton Street. It sat next to an old farmhouse also owned by Mary “Sironi” Tesolin, Carmen’s mother.
Both of Ralph Ratliff’s sons worked shifts for the ambulance service as well as working other jobs, so Ralph Jr. and Harold were always descending the stairs to raid the refrigerator. One of Harold’s sons, Kenny, also lived there. Ralph and Irene Ratliff assumed the responsibility of caring for Kenneth Ratliff after Harold’s divorce from his first wife Virginia. They continued to care for Kenny until he joined the Navy in 1965.
Kenny and I slept in the glassed in front porch of the house. I remember it being quite cold, especially since my aunt Irene insisted on an open window, even in mid winter. Something about the health benefits of fresh air. It was also noisy. The police radio was always on in the living room for some reason. I didn’t understand why the radio wasn’t upstairs with the ambulance guys. The house was also very close to Bayshore Highway, and there was a stop light at Middlefield and Bayshore. Trucks that stopped at the light had to rev up their engines to get moving again. On the other side were the trains. The tracks were, a few blocks away, but the trains ran all night. I don’t think I got a lotta sleep.
In the late 1950s Harold and Ralph Junior Ratliff purchased the Flying “A” service station at the corner of Middlefield and Bayshore. Ralph Sr. helped with the financing.
In 1959 Ralph Junior Ratliff left the business and eventually moved his family to Oregon leaving Harold Ratliff the sole owner of the business.
In the late 1950s the County of San Mateo decided it needed the block that housed both Peninsula Ambulance Service and Ratliff’s Flying “A” so the Ambulance Business moved to a new location, and built a new building at 1260 Marshall St., and Harold Ratliff rejoined the Ambulance Company. The building on Marshall is still there and currently occupied by Aloha Flowers (2005).
Before the Kaiser Medical Center was completed in 1968 we used to set off 4th of July fireworks in front of the Ambulance Service. Kaiser was virtually built in our front yard. During the 1960s while Kaiser was being built my entire family worked at 1260 Marshall. My uncle ran the businesses, my cousins drove ambulances, and my mother ran the medical supply for a while. My aunt ran Sequoia Physicians & Surgeons Exchange in the same building. I even worked there when I was in high school in 1963.
After I was discharged from the U.S. Navy in 1967 I used the skills that I learned as a hospital corpsman to moonlight for various ambulance services while I was attending San Francisco State University. The skills required by civilian ambulance employees were nearly identical to those skills used by a field medic (corpsman) with the U.S. Marines. I worked in the operating room at the old Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. That made it possible for me to moonlight some nights and weekends for Bob’s Ambulance Service in Oakland while still on active duty.
Often, history is what is going on in the background of a photograph so the following photographs not only show some vintage Peninsula Ambulances from the 1940s and 50s, but also shows a large facility that belonged to the Mobil Oil Company. The Mobil facility was directly across Middlefield from both Peninsula Ambulance and the Flying “A” station. You can also see a tower appears close but was actually several blocks away at Frank’s Tannery. Just across the Highway from the Flying “A” was the Redwood City Rodeo Grounds. That’s about where the Department of Motor Vehicles is located now.
In 1961 Ralph Ratliff was voted president of the California Ambulance Association. On September 6th of that same year the San Mateo Times reported that my uncle and a California Highway Patrol Officer named Fred Hagen climbed down a 400-foot cliff on Tunitas Road to rescue a 16-year-old boy who was thrown from a Jeep when it hit a tree. My uncle was 57 years old at the time and had several younger drivers on his payroll, but he enjoyed the work so much that he was still taking regular turns behind the wheel of the ambulance.
People forget that before Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and specialized rescue vehicles, ambulance services did it all. Peninsula Ambulance Service covered most of San Mateo County, from delivering a baby in La Honda to rescuing a teenager coastside. I remember hearing my uncle’s voice on the ambulance radio informing the hospital that he was coming in from Half Moon Bay with one up and two down. That meant that he had two patients on gurneys and one on a hammock like device used only in extreme emergencies.
In most cases there were no freeways, so when an ambulance was coming in from coastside, it was traveling narrow twisting roads often in the fog. Some of those roads are still no fun to drive today.
The old Five Points Hotel at 2015 El Camino Real was the location of frequent calls. There was always trouble and ambulance calls to that location were always seen as dangerous. My uncle used to always complain about employees being injured on calls to the hotel. Some of the legendary danger may have been exaggerated, but the Redwood City Police closed down the hotel in the early 1950s.
My uncle was credited with saving the life of a man whose throat had been cut in a knife fight in the “five points area” on January 17, 1955. Somehow he managed keep the man from bleeding to death from a severed jugular vein on the way to the hospital, this according to the San Mateo Times.
It wasn’t always people who were rescued. When a 16 year old boy hit a dog with his motor scooter in 1957, he not only delivered the boy with a broken leg to the hospital, but he also delivered the dog to a vet.
That same year Uncle Ralph had to descend on a sling from a crane into a concrete vat to rescue a worker with a fractured spine. The worker was a welder working on a Bayshore Freeway overpass when he leaned too far into the vat.
On May 17, 1962 Ralph Ratliff represented Redwood City at the annual hearing conducted by the California State Chamber of Commerce. The Issues were the completion of the Five Points Overpass, the Junipero Serra Freeway (280), the Skyline Freeway and the Bayfront Freeway (101). There was also resolution offered by the City of Half Moon Bay seeking to continue the so-called San Bruno Freeway (380) to Half Moon Bay.
I’m not sure where my uncle stood on the last issue. This was just a couple of years after the City of Pacifica was formed to keep from being annexed by San Bruno, and a couple of years before Pacifica tried to annex all of the communities of the coastside down to Princeton By the Sea. Development was popular then. There was even a plan to make Montara into another Linda Mar.
Unfortunately, his election to the new post came shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer. His death in March 1963 was front-page news in the Times Tribune on March 18, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, whose Peninsula Ambulance Service has provided Redwood City’s emergency transportation for 19 years died Saturday afternoon after a long battle with cancer. Mr. Ratliff, 59, came here in 1939 to establish a garage and towing service at the corner of Main Street and Old Bayshore.
In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, told Mr. Ratliff that the community should be provided with some kind of ambulance service. Mr. Ratliff decided to go into the business. He began with one vehicle and today, with headquarters at 1260 Marshall St., has five.
A native of Springfield [actually Tallula], Ill., Mr. Ratliff came to Redwood City from San Francisco. He has been identified with many civic activities throughout the years, notably as the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Highway and Traffic Committee. It was for this group that he campaigned for the widening of Jefferson Ave. and Woodside Rd., the extension of Edgewood Rd. to Half Moon Bay, and many of the local provisions of the local in the proposed city-county highway bond issue.
Mr. Ratliff also was a member of the Redwood City Exchange club, Redwood City Elks lodge, Modern Woodmen of the World and United Commercial Travelers. He was a charter member and past president of the California Ambulance Association, and was awarded a 20-year pin as a first aide instructor by the Red Cross.
Mr. Ratliff’s family will continue to run the ambulance firm.
Survivors include his widow, Irene, at the family home, 1007 Katherine St.; Sons Ralph J., Menlo Park and Harold K., Redwood City; a daughter; Mrs. Virginia Collins, Los Altos and a son by a previous marriage, Ralph H. Ratliff Jr. of Los Angeles. A Sister, Mrs. Mardel Womer [My mother’s married name with her second husband] resides in Redwood City. There are 15 grandchildren.
Private Funeral Services were held at Lyng & Tinney Funeral Home, 717 Jefferson Ave. Mr. Ratliff willed his body to Stanford Medical School for research.
The family prefers contributions to the American Cancer Society, 1517 South B St., San Mateo.
And in another article on March 25, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, A Valuable Citizen
It was no longer news to his friends when it appeared in Monday’s paper that Ralph H. Ratliff had succumbed. Mr. Ratliff had been stricken with cancer more than a year ago, and hope for survival disappeared long ago but Mr. Ratliff refused to give up.
He knew that there were many jobs to be done, and he was going to do his best to get some results while he was still able to do so.
Mr. Ratliff was one of the developers of an excellent ambulance for Peninsulans. He wasn’t merely satisfied to transport to the hospital; he became an expert in first aide and his careful handling of patients was in many cases the difference between life and death.
Mr. Ratliff didn’t confine himself to matter involving his own profession. He was civic minded, and in this too he put in his best effort. Hi thorough study of Redwood City’s street and traffic problems, made at the request of the Chamber of Commerce, has been used as a model by both city and county governments in planning for the future.
Much of his best work came after he knew that he would never be able to shake the cancer that was spreading through his body.
This effort and enthusiasm ….the will to keep working for the public’s benefit even while knowing that he would reap none of the benefits…made Ralph H. Ratliff one of Redwood City’s most valuable citizens.
The entire community shares with his family this deep loss.
The family tried to continue the business together, but as often happens in these situations, there was disagreement about how the business should be run, so Harold Ratliff established a competing service, California Ambulance.
Harold Ratliff in the California Ambulance Office about 1970
California Ambulance Service was moderately successful but the move by San Mateo County to station emergency medical responders to fire stations left only non-emergency transport work to private ambulance companies. Eventually, both Peninsula Ambulance Service and California Ambulance Service merged with Mercy Ambulance Service in Daly City to form Mercy-Peninsula Ambulance.
Irene Ratliff retired and moved to Oregon to be close to her children. Harold worked at Raychem in Menlo Park until his death on May 06, 1985. He died of a heart attack behind the wheel of his car on El Camino Real.
Times Tribune May 08, 1985
Harold Ratliff, 59, Known as “Ratliff the Magician” to scores of Peninsula children and church groups, and a resident of Redwood City for over 40 years, died Monday in Mills Memorial Hospital after a sudden illness. He was a native of San Francisco.
He was a Navy veteran of World War II and served in the Pacific. In recent years he worked for Raychem in Menlo Park.
As a magician he performed for churches, children’s parties and many organizations.
Survivors include his wife Carol, his wife of 37 years; his sons, Kenneth of San Jose and Donald and Robert of Oregon; daughters Donna Knerr of Texas, Sandra Ebaugh of Mountain View and Barbara Ferriera of Florida; brothers Ralph J. of Oregon and Ralph H. of Los Angeles; a sister, Virginia Collins of Pasadena; his mother, Irene Ratliff of Oregon.
Private services have been held with internment in Golden Gate National Cemetery at San Bruno under direction of the Redwood Chapel, Redwood City. The family suggests memorial gifts to the American Heart Association.
© Copyright 1996-2010 SFgenealogy. All rights reserved.
An entry for Category 11 (Grimm Reality) of MocWars, as part of The Misfits team.
In this modern reinterpretation of the Grimm Fairy Tale The Glass Coffin, a young boy fails to understand why the bullheaded doctor refuses to let him give his sister her favorite stuffed animal while undergoing Hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
Constructed between 1905 and 1907 as part of the third phase of construction of the Speicherstadt (1899 to 1912), the four-story building is one of the most recognizable landmarks and oldest buildings in the historic warehouse complex.
The design was probably based on designs by the two Hamburg architects Bernhard Georg Hanssen and Wilhelm Emil Meerwein , who were also involved in the designs for Hamburg City Hall . The brick facade is kept in historicizing forms and was decorated with glass brick bands and granite structuresfitted. Other features include the green copper roof, tall arched windows and round bay windows. The only tower is a clock turret with decorative bands of green glazed bricks and red granite stones. The flat, water-side extension at the back of the moated castle is not part of the original building, but was built in the post-war period from rubble. Until recently, the building housed offices and storage rooms. Originally, the moated castle was used as accommodation and workshop for the dock workers who carried out maintenance and repairs on the hydraulic storage winches . They were called wind guards or wind guards and had the privilege of being allowed to live in the warehouse district, along with other technical personnel.
The winches were an important part of the warehouses: there were - and still are - no freight elevators . All goods were pulled to and from the storage floors of the warehouses with winches on the outside of the facades.
The spare parts required for the maintenance work, some of which were heavy, could be transported from here via roads and canals. On the waterway via two cranes on the east side of the building, on land via an old cobbled street that leads directly into the building and ends behind the large double doors of the moated castle.
Today the building is used for commercial purposes. On the ground floor there is a commercial space for the tea trade with attached gastronomy. An oxygen therapy provider is located on the first floor . Because of its location and architecture, it has also served as a backdrop for television productions , such as the children's TV series The Peppercorns . [2]
The Wasserschlösschen also trades as the "external marriage office" of the Hamburg-Mitte registry office
I took these photos inside the infectious ward of the Karol Jonschers Children's Hospital, Poznań. It was a time when epidemic armageddon caused by RSV and the next wave of covid was going through pediatric wards. All isolation rooms were then occupied by infected children under the care of a parent. In the corridor there are rows of cardboard boxes with overalls, spare beds. Some kids were treated with oxygen. Less than 2-year-old kid subjected to high-flow oxygen therapy. Only there were fewer ventilators here than in adults. But they also happened.
The photos would not have been made without help and kindness from the crew of Department VIII. Special thanks are due to prof. dr hab. n. med. Magdalena Figlerowicz and Karolina Samarzewska, MA, who agreed to the presence of a annoying man with a camera in their clinic.
Autmn/winter 22/23. Poznań, PL.
I took these photos inside the infectious ward of the Karol Jonschers Children's Hospital, Poznań. It was a time when epidemic armageddon caused by RSV and the next wave of covid was going through pediatric wards. All isolation rooms were then occupied by infected children under the care of a parent. In the corridor there are rows of cardboard boxes with overalls, spare beds. Some kids were treated with oxygen. Less than 2-year-old kid subjected to high-flow oxygen therapy. Only there were fewer ventilators here than in adults. But they also happened.
The photos would not have been made without help and kindness from the crew of Department VIII. Special thanks are due to prof. dr hab. n. med. Magdalena Figlerowicz and Karolina Samarzewska, MA, who agreed to the presence of a annoying man with a camera in their clinic.
Autmn/winter 22/23. Poznań, PL.
This Peninsula Ambulance came to a bad ending when it met a train. I don’t know the details of the accident. I tried to find the story of this accident in the newspaper archives but wasn’t successful. I did find a record of an accident between a Peninsula Ambulance and a car at Bayshore and Holly road in 1949, and another in 1953 at the corner of Ralston and El Camino Real.
- Michael Ratliff Lutz
www.sfgenealogy.com/sanmateo/history/ambulance/smambulanc...
As remembered by
Michael Ratliff Lutz
Introduction:
When I began researching my family’s history in Redwood City, California in the year 2004 I was certain that I would be able to find a lot of information about my uncle, Ralph H. Ratliff since his death in March of 1963 was front-page news in The Redwood City Tribune. To my surprise, he was nearly a forgotten man. The local historical societies only had a couple of old newspaper clippings. I only had the clippings and photos that my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff (Lutz) (Womer), had saved in her scrapbook over the years to work with. With the help of a few relatives I have been able to reconstruct the story of Ralph Ratliff and his Peninsula Ambulance Service.
Ratliff Enterprises as described in a 1961 Redwood City Tribune article:
Twelve women in three shifts work around the clock with their fingers virtually on the pulse of a vast segment of professional and business life. These women answer a monthly average of 38,000 telephone calls.
They are employees of Ratliff Enterprises, Inc a family owner corporation occupying its own two-story building at 1260 Marshall Street. Ratliff Enterprises operates the Redwood City Telephone Answering Service, which embraces the Sequoia District Physicians Exchange. It also operates the Peninsula Ambulance Service and the Peninsula Hospital Rental Service. Its ambulances respond to 500 calls monthly. The County of San Mateo subsidizes peninsula Ambulance Service.
Its rental service rents out anything needed for the care of patients in the home…such things as oxygen, refrigerated tents, wheel chairs, therapy lamps, traction equipment and beds.
The officers of the corporation are Ralph H. Ratliff, president: his wife Irene I. Ratliff: vice president their two sons and a daughter, K. Harold Ratliff and Ralph J. Ratliff, and Mrs. Virginia Collins, directors. Mrs. Ratliff manages the answering service with Mrs. Collins as the assistant manager. Harold is the manager and bookkeeper of the ambulance and rental divisions.
Mateo County uses a subsidy system with Peninsula Ambulance Service so they could discontinue their own emergency ambulance service. If the company couldn’t collect from individuals, the county would reimburse them $20 per call for all service ordered through police systems. Most calls came through the Sheriffs Office.
In 1960 Peninsula Ambulance received a subsidy of $18,000, a considerable savings compared to what it would have cost to operate their own system. Ambulance employees were taught advanced Red Cross first aide, basic obstetrics and oxygen therapy.
As to obstetrics, Ralph Ratliff personally delivered 10 babies while working shifts with his ambulance crews, three of these births occurred in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. It just happened that 10 mothers waited until the very last minute. Unlike in the storybooks, none of the babies were named after him.
The ambulance fees are $25 per call plus supplies used at the accident scene like splints and oxygen, and $12.50 if a second patient on a stretcher was involved. A third person with minor injuries could ride with the driver for free.
I was able to find reports of two of those baby deliveries in the San Mateo Times archives, one in La Honda on July 14, 1949, and another in the back of the ambulance on August 21 1957. It is true that neither baby was named Ralph after my uncle, but then again, they were both girls.
Oops, I nearly missed the boy he delivered on July 2, 1954. He wasn’t named Ralph either.
Recent generations probably don’t realize that emergency medical service used to be provided by private ambulance companies. Until the late 1970s when EMTs were stationed in firehouses, private ambulance services like Peninsula Ambulance Service and Harold Ratliff’s California Ambulance Service would respond to medical emergencies. Ambulance personnel received advanced first aide training from the American Red Cross. In fact, Ralph Ratliff was a first aide instructor for the Red Cross for several years. The classes were taught at the Sequoia Chapter of the American Red Cross, 3540 Middlefield Road in Menlo Park. There were six, two-hour sessions taught in the evening, ending in a Red Cross certificate for those who passed the course.
I’m probably not the best person to tell the story of Peninsula Ambulance since my contact with this part of my family was rather inconsistent over the years. My mother was half owner of Home Creek Resort at Huntington lake in Fresno County so except for two years in 1951 and 1952 when we wintered over with Ralph Ratliff’s family in Redwood City, my contact was limited to a couple of weeks on vacation every year. In my senior high school year, 1962-63 we moved to Redwood City, but that was just a few months before my uncle died. There was a time when you couldn’t go anywhere in Redwood City without bumping into a member of the Ratliff family, but now it seems I’m the only one left. Fortunately, my mother saved numerous newspaper articles and photographs that should be helpful.
Ralph H. Ratliff was born in Tallula, Illinois on November 05, 1903 to George O. and Carrie Ratliff of Jacksonville, Illinois. The family, including his older brother Frank Jerry Ratliff, and younger sister and my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff later moved to Los Angeles then to San Francisco in the 1920s. My grandfather, George O. Ratliff was in the real estate business but Ralph found working on cars more to his liking, so for several years he worked as an auto mechanic in San Francisco.
Prior to leaving Los Angeles, Ralph had a brief marriage to Mildred Hensley, and a son Ralph H. Ratliff Jr., born October 14, 1922. Ralph Jr. moved to San Francisco with the rest of the family and was cared for by my mother and grandmother until Ralph married Irene I. Haseltine of Redwood City in Palo Alto, California on May 8, 1925. Their first son, Kenneth “Harold” Ratliff was born November 04, 1925. They had two additional children, Ralph Junior Ratliff, born January 25, 1927 and Virginia Lois Ratliff, born May 21, 1928.
Irene Haseltine was a Redwood City girl, her emigrated to Redwood City from Wisconsin in the early 1900s. Ralph and Irene Ratliff continued to live in San Francisco until 1939 when, with financial assistance from his father George Ratliff, he opened the Peninsula Garage in Redwood City.
The first location of the Peninsula Garage was near Bayshore Highway, near Main and Bradford today. This section of Bayshore is now Veteran’s Blvd. The location near the highway made it easier for both the towing business and the ambulance business to respond quickly. When they moved to 432 Middlefield Rd. they were about the same distance from the highway as they were at Main and Bradford. There were no freeways then. The highways all had stoplights at major intersections. Bayshore Highway had only two lanes in each direction with no center divider. There were very few buildings along old Bayshore but there were a lot of billboards
Towing was a large part of the Peninsula Garage business. It was the towing business that got Ralph Ratliff started in the ambulance business. Ralph’s tow trucks were arriving at auto accident scenes long before the ambulance arrived. In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, asked my uncle to provide the community with some kind of ambulance service. Ralph purchased a used ambulance from a taxicab company, took first aide classes, and went into business. It’s not clear why a taxi company had an ambulance.
At first the Peninsula Garage and Peninsula Ambulance coexisted at the same address at 450 Main St., Redwood City. They also shared the same phone number for a while which probably caused some confusion, but there is no record of a tow truck responding to an ambulance call.
During the early 1940s the Ratliff family lived on Oxford Street in Redwood City. Oxford Street was pretty much out in the country then. There were very few other houses around. Later they moved to a large white house at 432 Middlefield Rd. near the corner of old Bayshore Highway. That location is now a county parking lot. That house also served as the base for the ambulance service.
This article about my cousin Harold Ratliff’s wedding reception pretty much sums up the Ratliff family in Redwood City during World War 2. My mother was living with the Ratliff’s on Oxford Street then. My father was away in the army and I was just born a month before or so before the article was written so it was easier for her to live with relatives. I was at this reception but don’t remember much.
Ironically, I was born in San Francisco. My family was from San Francisco but by 1944 my grand parents had moved to Burlingame and my mother was living in Redwood City. They all decided to go to a fireworks display at Kezar stadium in 1944, and that’s when and where I was born.
Redwood City Tribune, August 1944:
A large wedding party and reception was held in honor of newly wedded Mr. and Mrs. Harold Kenneth Ratliff, the former Miss Virginia Alberta French of San Francisco, at the home of the groom’s grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Alva Haseltine of 479 Sequoia Ave. last week.
Because of Harold’s short leave from the navy, in which he is a seaman second class, the couple was married in Reno on Aug. 23. They met several years ago when Virginia visited her aunt, Mrs. Tom Kelly of Redwood City.
For her wedding the bride chose the navy colors of navy blue and white. She wore a navy blue suit with white accessories and a gardenia corsage.
Harold is the son of Mr. and Mrs. R.H. Ratliff of 1474 Oxford St. He is the brother of Ralph and Virginia Ratliff who attend Sequoia High School and Ralph Harold Ratliff Jr. who is now in the U.S. Army at Camp Haan. Harold also attended Sequoia High School.
At the reception the table was decorated in blue and white centered with a tiered wedding cake topped with a miniature sailor and his bride. Many gifts were received by the newlyweds.
Attending the reception were Mr. and Mrs. George Ratliff, grandparents of the groom, Mrs. Nina Mardel Lutz, aunt, and son Michael Lutz; Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Keyser, aunt and uncle, and cousins, Bonnie, Phillip and Jimmie Keyser; Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Haseltine, aunt and uncle, and Neal and Dale Haseltine; Mrs. Jasper Haseltine, aunt, and Joanne and Freddie Haseltine, and Sgt. and Mrs. Herbert England, cousins, and daughter, Sharon Lee.
Also attending were Sgt. and Mrs. John Whittington, Mr. and Mrs. Tony Alvis and sons, Mr. Norman Peterson and Kenneth Peterson, USN.
Unable to attend were Mr. Jasper Haseltine, uncle, who is now overseas with the merchant marine, Sgt. Eddie Thoemke of the U.S. Army, and Mrs. Thoemke, uncle and aunt; and Sgt. Richard Lutz, uncle, who is currently stationed in Roswell, New Mexico.
This is my cousin Virginia (Ginny) Ratliff behind their home at 1474 Oxford St in Redwood City about in the late 1940s. That area behind her would be covered with houses by 1950.
Unfortunately, Harold Ratliff’s Marriage to Virginia French only lasted a couple of years. He later married Carol Sufczynski Dierks of Redwood City on March 26,1949.
Around 1948 the Ratliff family and the business moved to a new location at 432 Middlefield Road, now a parking lot for the San Mateo County Offices. The garage was sold and they purchased an answering service, Sequoia District Physicians Exchange.
Both the businesses and the family occupied the same large house. The answering service occupied what was a large living room. Fortunately the house must have had two living rooms, because there was another room of equal size with a connecting door. The upstairs served as quarters for the ambulance crews.
There was enough room in the house to accommodate my mother and me the winters of 1951 and 1952 during the off-season for my mother’s business, Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake, CA. From November to March we lived in Redwood City. I attended Monroe School, and mom worked shifts at the answering service.
On October 08, 1949 my uncle Ralph was nearly killed in a three-car pile up on old Pacheco Pass. He was on his way to Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake in Fresno County. The resort was co-owned by my mother, and uncle Frank “Jerry” Ratliff. Every fall the family gathered at the resort during deer season. I can remember my uncle in what was nearly a full body cast lying in a hospital bed in the living room of that house on Middlefield.
Getting to Monroe School was an easy walk then because Bradford connected Middlefield Rd. and Allerton St. Ralph Junior Ratliff and his family lived at 730 Allerton diagonally across from Monroe School so they were available to point me in the right direction when I got lost my first day. In one of those little coincidences that happen now and then, my cousin’s landlady at 730 Allerton was Mrs. Mary Tesolin, the mother of Carmen Tesolin, my future wife, though I didn’t actually meet her until 1963. In 1955, my cousin Ralph Junior Ratliff and family lived in the old carriage house on property at 726-730 Allerton Street. It sat next to an old farmhouse also owned by Mary “Sironi” Tesolin, Carmen’s mother.
Both of Ralph Ratliff’s sons worked shifts for the ambulance service as well as working other jobs, so Ralph Jr. and Harold were always descending the stairs to raid the refrigerator. One of Harold’s sons, Kenny, also lived there. Ralph and Irene Ratliff assumed the responsibility of caring for Kenneth Ratliff after Harold’s divorce from his first wife Virginia. They continued to care for Kenny until he joined the Navy in 1965.
Kenny and I slept in the glassed in front porch of the house. I remember it being quite cold, especially since my aunt Irene insisted on an open window, even in mid winter. Something about the health benefits of fresh air. It was also noisy. The police radio was always on in the living room for some reason. I didn’t understand why the radio wasn’t upstairs with the ambulance guys. The house was also very close to Bayshore Highway, and there was a stop light at Middlefield and Bayshore. Trucks that stopped at the light had to rev up their engines to get moving again. On the other side were the trains. The tracks were, a few blocks away, but the trains ran all night. I don’t think I got a lotta sleep.
In the late 1950s Harold and Ralph Junior Ratliff purchased the Flying “A” service station at the corner of Middlefield and Bayshore. Ralph Sr. helped with the financing.
In 1959 Ralph Junior Ratliff left the business and eventually moved his family to Oregon leaving Harold Ratliff the sole owner of the business.
In the late 1950s the County of San Mateo decided it needed the block that housed both Peninsula Ambulance Service and Ratliff’s Flying “A” so the Ambulance Business moved to a new location, and built a new building at 1260 Marshall St., and Harold Ratliff rejoined the Ambulance Company. The building on Marshall is still there and currently occupied by Aloha Flowers (2005).
Before the Kaiser Medical Center was completed in 1968 we used to set off 4th of July fireworks in front of the Ambulance Service. Kaiser was virtually built in our front yard. During the 1960s while Kaiser was being built my entire family worked at 1260 Marshall. My uncle ran the businesses, my cousins drove ambulances, and my mother ran the medical supply for a while. My aunt ran Sequoia Physicians & Surgeons Exchange in the same building. I even worked there when I was in high school in 1963.
After I was discharged from the U.S. Navy in 1967 I used the skills that I learned as a hospital corpsman to moonlight for various ambulance services while I was attending San Francisco State University. The skills required by civilian ambulance employees were nearly identical to those skills used by a field medic (corpsman) with the U.S. Marines. I worked in the operating room at the old Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. That made it possible for me to moonlight some nights and weekends for Bob’s Ambulance Service in Oakland while still on active duty.
Often, history is what is going on in the background of a photograph so the following photographs not only show some vintage Peninsula Ambulances from the 1940s and 50s, but also shows a large facility that belonged to the Mobil Oil Company. The Mobil facility was directly across Middlefield from both Peninsula Ambulance and the Flying “A” station. You can also see a tower appears close but was actually several blocks away at Frank’s Tannery. Just across the Highway from the Flying “A” was the Redwood City Rodeo Grounds. That’s about where the Department of Motor Vehicles is located now.
In 1961 Ralph Ratliff was voted president of the California Ambulance Association. On September 6th of that same year the San Mateo Times reported that my uncle and a California Highway Patrol Officer named Fred Hagen climbed down a 400-foot cliff on Tunitas Road to rescue a 16-year-old boy who was thrown from a Jeep when it hit a tree. My uncle was 57 years old at the time and had several younger drivers on his payroll, but he enjoyed the work so much that he was still taking regular turns behind the wheel of the ambulance.
People forget that before Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and specialized rescue vehicles, ambulance services did it all. Peninsula Ambulance Service covered most of San Mateo County, from delivering a baby in La Honda to rescuing a teenager coastside. I remember hearing my uncle’s voice on the ambulance radio informing the hospital that he was coming in from Half Moon Bay with one up and two down. That meant that he had two patients on gurneys and one on a hammock like device used only in extreme emergencies.
In most cases there were no freeways, so when an ambulance was coming in from coastside, it was traveling narrow twisting roads often in the fog. Some of those roads are still no fun to drive today.
The old Five Points Hotel at 2015 El Camino Real was the location of frequent calls. There was always trouble and ambulance calls to that location were always seen as dangerous. My uncle used to always complain about employees being injured on calls to the hotel. Some of the legendary danger may have been exaggerated, but the Redwood City Police closed down the hotel in the early 1950s.
My uncle was credited with saving the life of a man whose throat had been cut in a knife fight in the “five points area” on January 17, 1955. Somehow he managed keep the man from bleeding to death from a severed jugular vein on the way to the hospital, this according to the San Mateo Times.
It wasn’t always people who were rescued. When a 16 year old boy hit a dog with his motor scooter in 1957, he not only delivered the boy with a broken leg to the hospital, but he also delivered the dog to a vet.
That same year Uncle Ralph had to descend on a sling from a crane into a concrete vat to rescue a worker with a fractured spine. The worker was a welder working on a Bayshore Freeway overpass when he leaned too far into the vat.
On May 17, 1962 Ralph Ratliff represented Redwood City at the annual hearing conducted by the California State Chamber of Commerce. The Issues were the completion of the Five Points Overpass, the Junipero Serra Freeway (280), the Skyline Freeway and the Bayfront Freeway (101). There was also resolution offered by the City of Half Moon Bay seeking to continue the so-called San Bruno Freeway (380) to Half Moon Bay.
I’m not sure where my uncle stood on the last issue. This was just a couple of years after the City of Pacifica was formed to keep from being annexed by San Bruno, and a couple of years before Pacifica tried to annex all of the communities of the coastside down to Princeton By the Sea. Development was popular then. There was even a plan to make Montara into another Linda Mar.
Unfortunately, his election to the new post came shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer. His death in March 1963 was front-page news in the Times Tribune on March 18, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, whose Peninsula Ambulance Service has provided Redwood City’s emergency transportation for 19 years died Saturday afternoon after a long battle with cancer. Mr. Ratliff, 59, came here in 1939 to establish a garage and towing service at the corner of Main Street and Old Bayshore.
In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, told Mr. Ratliff that the community should be provided with some kind of ambulance service. Mr. Ratliff decided to go into the business. He began with one vehicle and today, with headquarters at 1260 Marshall St., has five.
A native of Springfield [actually Tallula], Ill., Mr. Ratliff came to Redwood City from San Francisco. He has been identified with many civic activities throughout the years, notably as the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Highway and Traffic Committee. It was for this group that he campaigned for the widening of Jefferson Ave. and Woodside Rd., the extension of Edgewood Rd. to Half Moon Bay, and many of the local provisions of the local in the proposed city-county highway bond issue.
Mr. Ratliff also was a member of the Redwood City Exchange club, Redwood City Elks lodge, Modern Woodmen of the World and United Commercial Travelers. He was a charter member and past president of the California Ambulance Association, and was awarded a 20-year pin as a first aide instructor by the Red Cross.
Mr. Ratliff’s family will continue to run the ambulance firm.
Survivors include his widow, Irene, at the family home, 1007 Katherine St.; Sons Ralph J., Menlo Park and Harold K., Redwood City; a daughter; Mrs. Virginia Collins, Los Altos and a son by a previous marriage, Ralph H. Ratliff Jr. of Los Angeles. A Sister, Mrs. Mardel Womer [My mother’s married name with her second husband] resides in Redwood City. There are 15 grandchildren.
Private Funeral Services were held at Lyng & Tinney Funeral Home, 717 Jefferson Ave. Mr. Ratliff willed his body to Stanford Medical School for research.
The family prefers contributions to the American Cancer Society, 1517 South B St., San Mateo.
And in another article on March 25, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, A Valuable Citizen
It was no longer news to his friends when it appeared in Monday’s paper that Ralph H. Ratliff had succumbed. Mr. Ratliff had been stricken with cancer more than a year ago, and hope for survival disappeared long ago but Mr. Ratliff refused to give up.
He knew that there were many jobs to be done, and he was going to do his best to get some results while he was still able to do so.
Mr. Ratliff was one of the developers of an excellent ambulance for Peninsulans. He wasn’t merely satisfied to transport to the hospital; he became an expert in first aide and his careful handling of patients was in many cases the difference between life and death.
Mr. Ratliff didn’t confine himself to matter involving his own profession. He was civic minded, and in this too he put in his best effort. Hi thorough study of Redwood City’s street and traffic problems, made at the request of the Chamber of Commerce, has been used as a model by both city and county governments in planning for the future.
Much of his best work came after he knew that he would never be able to shake the cancer that was spreading through his body.
This effort and enthusiasm ….the will to keep working for the public’s benefit even while knowing that he would reap none of the benefits…made Ralph H. Ratliff one of Redwood City’s most valuable citizens.
The entire community shares with his family this deep loss.
The family tried to continue the business together, but as often happens in these situations, there was disagreement about how the business should be run, so Harold Ratliff established a competing service, California Ambulance.
Harold Ratliff in the California Ambulance Office about 1970
California Ambulance Service was moderately successful but the move by San Mateo County to station emergency medical responders to fire stations left only non-emergency transport work to private ambulance companies. Eventually, both Peninsula Ambulance Service and California Ambulance Service merged with Mercy Ambulance Service in Daly City to form Mercy-Peninsula Ambulance.
Irene Ratliff retired and moved to Oregon to be close to her children. Harold worked at Raychem in Menlo Park until his death on May 06, 1985. He died of a heart attack behind the wheel of his car on El Camino Real.
Times Tribune May 08, 1985
Harold Ratliff, 59, Known as “Ratliff the Magician” to scores of Peninsula children and church groups, and a resident of Redwood City for over 40 years, died Monday in Mills Memorial Hospital after a sudden illness. He was a native of San Francisco.
He was a Navy veteran of World War II and served in the Pacific. In recent years he worked for Raychem in Menlo Park.
As a magician he performed for churches, children’s parties and many organizations.
Survivors include his wife Carol, his wife of 37 years; his sons, Kenneth of San Jose and Donald and Robert of Oregon; daughters Donna Knerr of Texas, Sandra Ebaugh of Mountain View and Barbara Ferriera of Florida; brothers Ralph J. of Oregon and Ralph H. of Los Angeles; a sister, Virginia Collins of Pasadena; his mother, Irene Ratliff of Oregon.
Private services have been held with internment in Golden Gate National Cemetery at San Bruno under direction of the Redwood Chapel, Redwood City. The family suggests memorial gifts to the American Heart Association.
© Copyright 1996-2010 SFgenealogy. All rights reserved.
I took these photos inside the infectious ward of the Karol Jonschers Children's Hospital, Poznań. It was a time when epidemic armageddon caused by RSV and the next wave of covid was going through pediatric wards. All isolation rooms were then occupied by infected children under the care of a parent. In the corridor there are rows of cardboard boxes with overalls, spare beds. Some kids were treated with oxygen. Less than 2-year-old kid subjected to high-flow oxygen therapy. Only there were fewer ventilators here than in adults. But they also happened.
The photos would not have been made without help and kindness from the crew of Department VIII. Special thanks are due to prof. dr hab. n. med. Magdalena Figlerowicz and Karolina Samarzewska, MA, who agreed to the presence of a annoying man with a camera in their clinic.
Autmn/winter 22/23. Poznań, PL.
I took these photos inside the infectious ward of the Karol Jonschers Children's Hospital, Poznań. It was a time when epidemic armageddon caused by RSV and the next wave of covid was going through pediatric wards. All isolation rooms were then occupied by infected children under the care of a parent. In the corridor there are rows of cardboard boxes with overalls, spare beds. Some kids were treated with oxygen. Less than 2-year-old kid subjected to high-flow oxygen therapy. Only there were fewer ventilators here than in adults. But they also happened.
The photos would not have been made without help and kindness from the crew of Department VIII. Special thanks are due to prof. dr hab. n. med. Magdalena Figlerowicz and Karolina Samarzewska, MA, who agreed to the presence of a annoying man with a camera in their clinic.
Autmn/winter 22/23. Poznań, PL.
www.sfgenealogy.com/sanmateo/history/ambulance/smambulanc...
As remembered by
Michael Ratliff Lutz
Introduction:
When I began researching my family’s history in Redwood City, California in the year 2004 I was certain that I would be able to find a lot of information about my uncle, Ralph H. Ratliff since his death in March of 1963 was front-page news in The Redwood City Tribune. To my surprise, he was nearly a forgotten man. The local historical societies only had a couple of old newspaper clippings. I only had the clippings and photos that my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff (Lutz) (Womer), had saved in her scrapbook over the years to work with. With the help of a few relatives I have been able to reconstruct the story of Ralph Ratliff and his Peninsula Ambulance Service.
Ratliff Enterprises as described in a 1961 Redwood City Tribune article:
Twelve women in three shifts work around the clock with their fingers virtually on the pulse of a vast segment of professional and business life. These women answer a monthly average of 38,000 telephone calls.
They are employees of Ratliff Enterprises, Inc a family owner corporation occupying its own two-story building at 1260 Marshall Street. Ratliff Enterprises operates the Redwood City Telephone Answering Service, which embraces the Sequoia District Physicians Exchange. It also operates the Peninsula Ambulance Service and the Peninsula Hospital Rental Service. Its ambulances respond to 500 calls monthly. The County of San Mateo subsidizes peninsula Ambulance Service.
Its rental service rents out anything needed for the care of patients in the home…such things as oxygen, refrigerated tents, wheel chairs, therapy lamps, traction equipment and beds.
The officers of the corporation are Ralph H. Ratliff, president: his wife Irene I. Ratliff: vice president their two sons and a daughter, K. Harold Ratliff and Ralph J. Ratliff, and Mrs. Virginia Collins, directors. Mrs. Ratliff manages the answering service with Mrs. Collins as the assistant manager. Harold is the manager and bookkeeper of the ambulance and rental divisions.
Mateo County uses a subsidy system with Peninsula Ambulance Service so they could discontinue their own emergency ambulance service. If the company couldn’t collect from individuals, the county would reimburse them $20 per call for all service ordered through police systems. Most calls came through the Sheriffs Office.
In 1960 Peninsula Ambulance received a subsidy of $18,000, a considerable savings compared to what it would have cost to operate their own system. Ambulance employees were taught advanced Red Cross first aide, basic obstetrics and oxygen therapy.
As to obstetrics, Ralph Ratliff personally delivered 10 babies while working shifts with his ambulance crews, three of these births occurred in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. It just happened that 10 mothers waited until the very last minute. Unlike in the storybooks, none of the babies were named after him.
The ambulance fees are $25 per call plus supplies used at the accident scene like splints and oxygen, and $12.50 if a second patient on a stretcher was involved. A third person with minor injuries could ride with the driver for free.
I was able to find reports of two of those baby deliveries in the San Mateo Times archives, one in La Honda on July 14, 1949, and another in the back of the ambulance on August 21 1957. It is true that neither baby was named Ralph after my uncle, but then again, they were both girls.
Oops, I nearly missed the boy he delivered on July 2, 1954. He wasn’t named Ralph either.
Recent generations probably don’t realize that emergency medical service used to be provided by private ambulance companies. Until the late 1970s when EMTs were stationed in firehouses, private ambulance services like Peninsula Ambulance Service and Harold Ratliff’s California Ambulance Service would respond to medical emergencies. Ambulance personnel received advanced first aide training from the American Red Cross. In fact, Ralph Ratliff was a first aide instructor for the Red Cross for several years. The classes were taught at the Sequoia Chapter of the American Red Cross, 3540 Middlefield Road in Menlo Park. There were six, two-hour sessions taught in the evening, ending in a Red Cross certificate for those who passed the course.
I’m probably not the best person to tell the story of Peninsula Ambulance since my contact with this part of my family was rather inconsistent over the years. My mother was half owner of Home Creek Resort at Huntington lake in Fresno County so except for two years in 1951 and 1952 when we wintered over with Ralph Ratliff’s family in Redwood City, my contact was limited to a couple of weeks on vacation every year. In my senior high school year, 1962-63 we moved to Redwood City, but that was just a few months before my uncle died. There was a time when you couldn’t go anywhere in Redwood City without bumping into a member of the Ratliff family, but now it seems I’m the only one left. Fortunately, my mother saved numerous newspaper articles and photographs that should be helpful.
Ralph H. Ratliff was born in Tallula, Illinois on November 05, 1903 to George O. and Carrie Ratliff of Jacksonville, Illinois. The family, including his older brother Frank Jerry Ratliff, and younger sister and my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff later moved to Los Angeles then to San Francisco in the 1920s. My grandfather, George O. Ratliff was in the real estate business but Ralph found working on cars more to his liking, so for several years he worked as an auto mechanic in San Francisco.
Prior to leaving Los Angeles, Ralph had a brief marriage to Mildred Hensley, and a son Ralph H. Ratliff Jr., born October 14, 1922. Ralph Jr. moved to San Francisco with the rest of the family and was cared for by my mother and grandmother until Ralph married Irene I. Haseltine of Redwood City in Palo Alto, California on May 8, 1925. Their first son, Kenneth “Harold” Ratliff was born November 04, 1925. They had two additional children, Ralph Junior Ratliff, born January 25, 1927 and Virginia Lois Ratliff, born May 21, 1928.
Irene Haseltine was a Redwood City girl, her emigrated to Redwood City from Wisconsin in the early 1900s. Ralph and Irene Ratliff continued to live in San Francisco until 1939 when, with financial assistance from his father George Ratliff, he opened the Peninsula Garage in Redwood City.
The first location of the Peninsula Garage was near Bayshore Highway, near Main and Bradford today. This section of Bayshore is now Veteran’s Blvd. The location near the highway made it easier for both the towing business and the ambulance business to respond quickly. When they moved to 432 Middlefield Rd. they were about the same distance from the highway as they were at Main and Bradford. There were no freeways then. The highways all had stoplights at major intersections. Bayshore Highway had only two lanes in each direction with no center divider. There were very few buildings along old Bayshore but there were a lot of billboards
Towing was a large part of the Peninsula Garage business. It was the towing business that got Ralph Ratliff started in the ambulance business. Ralph’s tow trucks were arriving at auto accident scenes long before the ambulance arrived. In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, asked my uncle to provide the community with some kind of ambulance service. Ralph purchased a used ambulance from a taxicab company, took first aide classes, and went into business. It’s not clear why a taxi company had an ambulance.
At first the Peninsula Garage and Peninsula Ambulance coexisted at the same address at 450 Main St., Redwood City. They also shared the same phone number for a while which probably caused some confusion, but there is no record of a tow truck responding to an ambulance call.
During the early 1940s the Ratliff family lived on Oxford Street in Redwood City. Oxford Street was pretty much out in the country then. There were very few other houses around. Later they moved to a large white house at 432 Middlefield Rd. near the corner of old Bayshore Highway. That location is now a county parking lot. That house also served as the base for the ambulance service.
This article about my cousin Harold Ratliff’s wedding reception pretty much sums up the Ratliff family in Redwood City during World War 2. My mother was living with the Ratliff’s on Oxford Street then. My father was away in the army and I was just born a month before or so before the article was written so it was easier for her to live with relatives. I was at this reception but don’t remember much.
Ironically, I was born in San Francisco. My family was from San Francisco but by 1944 my grand parents had moved to Burlingame and my mother was living in Redwood City. They all decided to go to a fireworks display at Kezar stadium in 1944, and that’s when and where I was born.
Redwood City Tribune, August 1944:
A large wedding party and reception was held in honor of newly wedded Mr. and Mrs. Harold Kenneth Ratliff, the former Miss Virginia Alberta French of San Francisco, at the home of the groom’s grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Alva Haseltine of 479 Sequoia Ave. last week.
Because of Harold’s short leave from the navy, in which he is a seaman second class, the couple was married in Reno on Aug. 23. They met several years ago when Virginia visited her aunt, Mrs. Tom Kelly of Redwood City.
For her wedding the bride chose the navy colors of navy blue and white. She wore a navy blue suit with white accessories and a gardenia corsage.
Harold is the son of Mr. and Mrs. R.H. Ratliff of 1474 Oxford St. He is the brother of Ralph and Virginia Ratliff who attend Sequoia High School and Ralph Harold Ratliff Jr. who is now in the U.S. Army at Camp Haan. Harold also attended Sequoia High School.
At the reception the table was decorated in blue and white centered with a tiered wedding cake topped with a miniature sailor and his bride. Many gifts were received by the newlyweds.
Attending the reception were Mr. and Mrs. George Ratliff, grandparents of the groom, Mrs. Nina Mardel Lutz, aunt, and son Michael Lutz; Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Keyser, aunt and uncle, and cousins, Bonnie, Phillip and Jimmie Keyser; Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Haseltine, aunt and uncle, and Neal and Dale Haseltine; Mrs. Jasper Haseltine, aunt, and Joanne and Freddie Haseltine, and Sgt. and Mrs. Herbert England, cousins, and daughter, Sharon Lee.
Also attending were Sgt. and Mrs. John Whittington, Mr. and Mrs. Tony Alvis and sons, Mr. Norman Peterson and Kenneth Peterson, USN.
Unable to attend were Mr. Jasper Haseltine, uncle, who is now overseas with the merchant marine, Sgt. Eddie Thoemke of the U.S. Army, and Mrs. Thoemke, uncle and aunt; and Sgt. Richard Lutz, uncle, who is currently stationed in Roswell, New Mexico.
This is my cousin Virginia (Ginny) Ratliff behind their home at 1474 Oxford St in Redwood City about in the late 1940s. That area behind her would be covered with houses by 1950.
Unfortunately, Harold Ratliff’s Marriage to Virginia French only lasted a couple of years. He later married Carol Sufczynski Dierks of Redwood City on March 26,1949.
Around 1948 the Ratliff family and the business moved to a new location at 432 Middlefield Road, now a parking lot for the San Mateo County Offices. The garage was sold and they purchased an answering service, Sequoia District Physicians Exchange.
Both the businesses and the family occupied the same large house. The answering service occupied what was a large living room. Fortunately the house must have had two living rooms, because there was another room of equal size with a connecting door. The upstairs served as quarters for the ambulance crews.
There was enough room in the house to accommodate my mother and me the winters of 1951 and 1952 during the off-season for my mother’s business, Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake, CA. From November to March we lived in Redwood City. I attended Monroe School, and mom worked shifts at the answering service.
On October 08, 1949 my uncle Ralph was nearly killed in a three-car pile up on old Pacheco Pass. He was on his way to Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake in Fresno County. The resort was co-owned by my mother, and uncle Frank “Jerry” Ratliff. Every fall the family gathered at the resort during deer season. I can remember my uncle in what was nearly a full body cast lying in a hospital bed in the living room of that house on Middlefield.
Getting to Monroe School was an easy walk then because Bradford connected Middlefield Rd. and Allerton St. Ralph Junior Ratliff and his family lived at 730 Allerton diagonally across from Monroe School so they were available to point me in the right direction when I got lost my first day. In one of those little coincidences that happen now and then, my cousin’s landlady at 730 Allerton was Mrs. Mary Tesolin, the mother of Carmen Tesolin, my future wife, though I didn’t actually meet her until 1963. In 1955, my cousin Ralph Junior Ratliff and family lived in the old carriage house on property at 726-730 Allerton Street. It sat next to an old farmhouse also owned by Mary “Sironi” Tesolin, Carmen’s mother.
Both of Ralph Ratliff’s sons worked shifts for the ambulance service as well as working other jobs, so Ralph Jr. and Harold were always descending the stairs to raid the refrigerator. One of Harold’s sons, Kenny, also lived there. Ralph and Irene Ratliff assumed the responsibility of caring for Kenneth Ratliff after Harold’s divorce from his first wife Virginia. They continued to care for Kenny until he joined the Navy in 1965.
Kenny and I slept in the glassed in front porch of the house. I remember it being quite cold, especially since my aunt Irene insisted on an open window, even in mid winter. Something about the health benefits of fresh air. It was also noisy. The police radio was always on in the living room for some reason. I didn’t understand why the radio wasn’t upstairs with the ambulance guys. The house was also very close to Bayshore Highway, and there was a stop light at Middlefield and Bayshore. Trucks that stopped at the light had to rev up their engines to get moving again. On the other side were the trains. The tracks were, a few blocks away, but the trains ran all night. I don’t think I got a lotta sleep.
In the late 1950s Harold and Ralph Junior Ratliff purchased the Flying “A” service station at the corner of Middlefield and Bayshore. Ralph Sr. helped with the financing.
In 1959 Ralph Junior Ratliff left the business and eventually moved his family to Oregon leaving Harold Ratliff the sole owner of the business.
In the late 1950s the County of San Mateo decided it needed the block that housed both Peninsula Ambulance Service and Ratliff’s Flying “A” so the Ambulance Business moved to a new location, and built a new building at 1260 Marshall St., and Harold Ratliff rejoined the Ambulance Company. The building on Marshall is still there and currently occupied by Aloha Flowers (2005).
Before the Kaiser Medical Center was completed in 1968 we used to set off 4th of July fireworks in front of the Ambulance Service. Kaiser was virtually built in our front yard. During the 1960s while Kaiser was being built my entire family worked at 1260 Marshall. My uncle ran the businesses, my cousins drove ambulances, and my mother ran the medical supply for a while. My aunt ran Sequoia Physicians & Surgeons Exchange in the same building. I even worked there when I was in high school in 1963.
After I was discharged from the U.S. Navy in 1967 I used the skills that I learned as a hospital corpsman to moonlight for various ambulance services while I was attending San Francisco State University. The skills required by civilian ambulance employees were nearly identical to those skills used by a field medic (corpsman) with the U.S. Marines. I worked in the operating room at the old Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. That made it possible for me to moonlight some nights and weekends for Bob’s Ambulance Service in Oakland while still on active duty.
Often, history is what is going on in the background of a photograph so the following photographs not only show some vintage Peninsula Ambulances from the 1940s and 50s, but also shows a large facility that belonged to the Mobil Oil Company. The Mobil facility was directly across Middlefield from both Peninsula Ambulance and the Flying “A” station. You can also see a tower appears close but was actually several blocks away at Frank’s Tannery. Just across the Highway from the Flying “A” was the Redwood City Rodeo Grounds. That’s about where the Department of Motor Vehicles is located now.
In 1961 Ralph Ratliff was voted president of the California Ambulance Association. On September 6th of that same year the San Mateo Times reported that my uncle and a California Highway Patrol Officer named Fred Hagen climbed down a 400-foot cliff on Tunitas Road to rescue a 16-year-old boy who was thrown from a Jeep when it hit a tree. My uncle was 57 years old at the time and had several younger drivers on his payroll, but he enjoyed the work so much that he was still taking regular turns behind the wheel of the ambulance.
People forget that before Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and specialized rescue vehicles, ambulance services did it all. Peninsula Ambulance Service covered most of San Mateo County, from delivering a baby in La Honda to rescuing a teenager coastside. I remember hearing my uncle’s voice on the ambulance radio informing the hospital that he was coming in from Half Moon Bay with one up and two down. That meant that he had two patients on gurneys and one on a hammock like device used only in extreme emergencies.
In most cases there were no freeways, so when an ambulance was coming in from coastside, it was traveling narrow twisting roads often in the fog. Some of those roads are still no fun to drive today.
The old Five Points Hotel at 2015 El Camino Real was the location of frequent calls. There was always trouble and ambulance calls to that location were always seen as dangerous. My uncle used to always complain about employees being injured on calls to the hotel. Some of the legendary danger may have been exaggerated, but the Redwood City Police closed down the hotel in the early 1950s.
My uncle was credited with saving the life of a man whose throat had been cut in a knife fight in the “five points area” on January 17, 1955. Somehow he managed keep the man from bleeding to death from a severed jugular vein on the way to the hospital, this according to the San Mateo Times.
It wasn’t always people who were rescued. When a 16 year old boy hit a dog with his motor scooter in 1957, he not only delivered the boy with a broken leg to the hospital, but he also delivered the dog to a vet.
That same year Uncle Ralph had to descend on a sling from a crane into a concrete vat to rescue a worker with a fractured spine. The worker was a welder working on a Bayshore Freeway overpass when he leaned too far into the vat.
On May 17, 1962 Ralph Ratliff represented Redwood City at the annual hearing conducted by the California State Chamber of Commerce. The Issues were the completion of the Five Points Overpass, the Junipero Serra Freeway (280), the Skyline Freeway and the Bayfront Freeway (101). There was also resolution offered by the City of Half Moon Bay seeking to continue the so-called San Bruno Freeway (380) to Half Moon Bay.
I’m not sure where my uncle stood on the last issue. This was just a couple of years after the City of Pacifica was formed to keep from being annexed by San Bruno, and a couple of years before Pacifica tried to annex all of the communities of the coastside down to Princeton By the Sea. Development was popular then. There was even a plan to make Montara into another Linda Mar.
Unfortunately, his election to the new post came shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer. His death in March 1963 was front-page news in the Times Tribune on March 18, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, whose Peninsula Ambulance Service has provided Redwood City’s emergency transportation for 19 years died Saturday afternoon after a long battle with cancer. Mr. Ratliff, 59, came here in 1939 to establish a garage and towing service at the corner of Main Street and Old Bayshore.
In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, told Mr. Ratliff that the community should be provided with some kind of ambulance service. Mr. Ratliff decided to go into the business. He began with one vehicle and today, with headquarters at 1260 Marshall St., has five.
A native of Springfield [actually Tallula], Ill., Mr. Ratliff came to Redwood City from San Francisco. He has been identified with many civic activities throughout the years, notably as the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Highway and Traffic Committee. It was for this group that he campaigned for the widening of Jefferson Ave. and Woodside Rd., the extension of Edgewood Rd. to Half Moon Bay, and many of the local provisions of the local in the proposed city-county highway bond issue.
Mr. Ratliff also was a member of the Redwood City Exchange club, Redwood City Elks lodge, Modern Woodmen of the World and United Commercial Travelers. He was a charter member and past president of the California Ambulance Association, and was awarded a 20-year pin as a first aide instructor by the Red Cross.
Mr. Ratliff’s family will continue to run the ambulance firm.
Survivors include his widow, Irene, at the family home, 1007 Katherine St.; Sons Ralph J., Menlo Park and Harold K., Redwood City; a daughter; Mrs. Virginia Collins, Los Altos and a son by a previous marriage, Ralph H. Ratliff Jr. of Los Angeles. A Sister, Mrs. Mardel Womer [My mother’s married name with her second husband] resides in Redwood City. There are 15 grandchildren.
Private Funeral Services were held at Lyng & Tinney Funeral Home, 717 Jefferson Ave. Mr. Ratliff willed his body to Stanford Medical School for research.
The family prefers contributions to the American Cancer Society, 1517 South B St., San Mateo.
And in another article on March 25, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, A Valuable Citizen
It was no longer news to his friends when it appeared in Monday’s paper that Ralph H. Ratliff had succumbed. Mr. Ratliff had been stricken with cancer more than a year ago, and hope for survival disappeared long ago but Mr. Ratliff refused to give up.
He knew that there were many jobs to be done, and he was going to do his best to get some results while he was still able to do so.
Mr. Ratliff was one of the developers of an excellent ambulance for Peninsulans. He wasn’t merely satisfied to transport to the hospital; he became an expert in first aide and his careful handling of patients was in many cases the difference between life and death.
Mr. Ratliff didn’t confine himself to matter involving his own profession. He was civic minded, and in this too he put in his best effort. Hi thorough study of Redwood City’s street and traffic problems, made at the request of the Chamber of Commerce, has been used as a model by both city and county governments in planning for the future.
Much of his best work came after he knew that he would never be able to shake the cancer that was spreading through his body.
This effort and enthusiasm ….the will to keep working for the public’s benefit even while knowing that he would reap none of the benefits…made Ralph H. Ratliff one of Redwood City’s most valuable citizens.
The entire community shares with his family this deep loss.
The family tried to continue the business together, but as often happens in these situations, there was disagreement about how the business should be run, so Harold Ratliff established a competing service, California Ambulance.
Harold Ratliff in the California Ambulance Office about 1970
California Ambulance Service was moderately successful but the move by San Mateo County to station emergency medical responders to fire stations left only non-emergency transport work to private ambulance companies. Eventually, both Peninsula Ambulance Service and California Ambulance Service merged with Mercy Ambulance Service in Daly City to form Mercy-Peninsula Ambulance.
Irene Ratliff retired and moved to Oregon to be close to her children. Harold worked at Raychem in Menlo Park until his death on May 06, 1985. He died of a heart attack behind the wheel of his car on El Camino Real.
Times Tribune May 08, 1985
Harold Ratliff, 59, Known as “Ratliff the Magician” to scores of Peninsula children and church groups, and a resident of Redwood City for over 40 years, died Monday in Mills Memorial Hospital after a sudden illness. He was a native of San Francisco.
He was a Navy veteran of World War II and served in the Pacific. In recent years he worked for Raychem in Menlo Park.
As a magician he performed for churches, children’s parties and many organizations.
Survivors include his wife Carol, his wife of 37 years; his sons, Kenneth of San Jose and Donald and Robert of Oregon; daughters Donna Knerr of Texas, Sandra Ebaugh of Mountain View and Barbara Ferriera of Florida; brothers Ralph J. of Oregon and Ralph H. of Los Angeles; a sister, Virginia Collins of Pasadena; his mother, Irene Ratliff of Oregon.
Private services have been held with internment in Golden Gate National Cemetery at San Bruno under direction of the Redwood Chapel, Redwood City. The family suggests memorial gifts to the American Heart Association.
© Copyright 1996-2010 SFgenealogy. All rights reserved.
My parents Nina Mardel (Ratliff) & Richard Lutz standing in front of what my uncle called the “Crash Wagon” at Ralph & Irene Ratliff’s home 1007 Katherine St., Redwood City. Living patients were not transported in this vehicle.
- Michael Ratliff Lutz
www.sfgenealogy.com/sanmateo/history/ambulance/smambulanc...
As remembered by
Michael Ratliff Lutz
Introduction:
When I began researching my family’s history in Redwood City, California in the year 2004 I was certain that I would be able to find a lot of information about my uncle, Ralph H. Ratliff since his death in March of 1963 was front-page news in The Redwood City Tribune. To my surprise, he was nearly a forgotten man. The local historical societies only had a couple of old newspaper clippings. I only had the clippings and photos that my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff (Lutz) (Womer), had saved in her scrapbook over the years to work with. With the help of a few relatives I have been able to reconstruct the story of Ralph Ratliff and his Peninsula Ambulance Service.
Ratliff Enterprises as described in a 1961 Redwood City Tribune article:
Twelve women in three shifts work around the clock with their fingers virtually on the pulse of a vast segment of professional and business life. These women answer a monthly average of 38,000 telephone calls.
They are employees of Ratliff Enterprises, Inc a family owner corporation occupying its own two-story building at 1260 Marshall Street. Ratliff Enterprises operates the Redwood City Telephone Answering Service, which embraces the Sequoia District Physicians Exchange. It also operates the Peninsula Ambulance Service and the Peninsula Hospital Rental Service. Its ambulances respond to 500 calls monthly. The County of San Mateo subsidizes peninsula Ambulance Service.
Its rental service rents out anything needed for the care of patients in the home…such things as oxygen, refrigerated tents, wheel chairs, therapy lamps, traction equipment and beds.
The officers of the corporation are Ralph H. Ratliff, president: his wife Irene I. Ratliff: vice president their two sons and a daughter, K. Harold Ratliff and Ralph J. Ratliff, and Mrs. Virginia Collins, directors. Mrs. Ratliff manages the answering service with Mrs. Collins as the assistant manager. Harold is the manager and bookkeeper of the ambulance and rental divisions.
Mateo County uses a subsidy system with Peninsula Ambulance Service so they could discontinue their own emergency ambulance service. If the company couldn’t collect from individuals, the county would reimburse them $20 per call for all service ordered through police systems. Most calls came through the Sheriffs Office.
In 1960 Peninsula Ambulance received a subsidy of $18,000, a considerable savings compared to what it would have cost to operate their own system. Ambulance employees were taught advanced Red Cross first aide, basic obstetrics and oxygen therapy.
As to obstetrics, Ralph Ratliff personally delivered 10 babies while working shifts with his ambulance crews, three of these births occurred in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. It just happened that 10 mothers waited until the very last minute. Unlike in the storybooks, none of the babies were named after him.
The ambulance fees are $25 per call plus supplies used at the accident scene like splints and oxygen, and $12.50 if a second patient on a stretcher was involved. A third person with minor injuries could ride with the driver for free.
I was able to find reports of two of those baby deliveries in the San Mateo Times archives, one in La Honda on July 14, 1949, and another in the back of the ambulance on August 21 1957. It is true that neither baby was named Ralph after my uncle, but then again, they were both girls.
Oops, I nearly missed the boy he delivered on July 2, 1954. He wasn’t named Ralph either.
Recent generations probably don’t realize that emergency medical service used to be provided by private ambulance companies. Until the late 1970s when EMTs were stationed in firehouses, private ambulance services like Peninsula Ambulance Service and Harold Ratliff’s California Ambulance Service would respond to medical emergencies. Ambulance personnel received advanced first aide training from the American Red Cross. In fact, Ralph Ratliff was a first aide instructor for the Red Cross for several years. The classes were taught at the Sequoia Chapter of the American Red Cross, 3540 Middlefield Road in Menlo Park. There were six, two-hour sessions taught in the evening, ending in a Red Cross certificate for those who passed the course.
I’m probably not the best person to tell the story of Peninsula Ambulance since my contact with this part of my family was rather inconsistent over the years. My mother was half owner of Home Creek Resort at Huntington lake in Fresno County so except for two years in 1951 and 1952 when we wintered over with Ralph Ratliff’s family in Redwood City, my contact was limited to a couple of weeks on vacation every year. In my senior high school year, 1962-63 we moved to Redwood City, but that was just a few months before my uncle died. There was a time when you couldn’t go anywhere in Redwood City without bumping into a member of the Ratliff family, but now it seems I’m the only one left. Fortunately, my mother saved numerous newspaper articles and photographs that should be helpful.
Ralph H. Ratliff was born in Tallula, Illinois on November 05, 1903 to George O. and Carrie Ratliff of Jacksonville, Illinois. The family, including his older brother Frank Jerry Ratliff, and younger sister and my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff later moved to Los Angeles then to San Francisco in the 1920s. My grandfather, George O. Ratliff was in the real estate business but Ralph found working on cars more to his liking, so for several years he worked as an auto mechanic in San Francisco.
Prior to leaving Los Angeles, Ralph had a brief marriage to Mildred Hensley, and a son Ralph H. Ratliff Jr., born October 14, 1922. Ralph Jr. moved to San Francisco with the rest of the family and was cared for by my mother and grandmother until Ralph married Irene I. Haseltine of Redwood City in Palo Alto, California on May 8, 1925. Their first son, Kenneth “Harold” Ratliff was born November 04, 1925. They had two additional children, Ralph Junior Ratliff, born January 25, 1927 and Virginia Lois Ratliff, born May 21, 1928.
Irene Haseltine was a Redwood City girl, her emigrated to Redwood City from Wisconsin in the early 1900s. Ralph and Irene Ratliff continued to live in San Francisco until 1939 when, with financial assistance from his father George Ratliff, he opened the Peninsula Garage in Redwood City.
The first location of the Peninsula Garage was near Bayshore Highway, near Main and Bradford today. This section of Bayshore is now Veteran’s Blvd. The location near the highway made it easier for both the towing business and the ambulance business to respond quickly. When they moved to 432 Middlefield Rd. they were about the same distance from the highway as they were at Main and Bradford. There were no freeways then. The highways all had stoplights at major intersections. Bayshore Highway had only two lanes in each direction with no center divider. There were very few buildings along old Bayshore but there were a lot of billboards
Towing was a large part of the Peninsula Garage business. It was the towing business that got Ralph Ratliff started in the ambulance business. Ralph’s tow trucks were arriving at auto accident scenes long before the ambulance arrived. In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, asked my uncle to provide the community with some kind of ambulance service. Ralph purchased a used ambulance from a taxicab company, took first aide classes, and went into business. It’s not clear why a taxi company had an ambulance.
At first the Peninsula Garage and Peninsula Ambulance coexisted at the same address at 450 Main St., Redwood City. They also shared the same phone number for a while which probably caused some confusion, but there is no record of a tow truck responding to an ambulance call.
During the early 1940s the Ratliff family lived on Oxford Street in Redwood City. Oxford Street was pretty much out in the country then. There were very few other houses around. Later they moved to a large white house at 432 Middlefield Rd. near the corner of old Bayshore Highway. That location is now a county parking lot. That house also served as the base for the ambulance service.
This article about my cousin Harold Ratliff’s wedding reception pretty much sums up the Ratliff family in Redwood City during World War 2. My mother was living with the Ratliff’s on Oxford Street then. My father was away in the army and I was just born a month before or so before the article was written so it was easier for her to live with relatives. I was at this reception but don’t remember much.
Ironically, I was born in San Francisco. My family was from San Francisco but by 1944 my grand parents had moved to Burlingame and my mother was living in Redwood City. They all decided to go to a fireworks display at Kezar stadium in 1944, and that’s when and where I was born.
Redwood City Tribune, August 1944:
A large wedding party and reception was held in honor of newly wedded Mr. and Mrs. Harold Kenneth Ratliff, the former Miss Virginia Alberta French of San Francisco, at the home of the groom’s grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Alva Haseltine of 479 Sequoia Ave. last week.
Because of Harold’s short leave from the navy, in which he is a seaman second class, the couple was married in Reno on Aug. 23. They met several years ago when Virginia visited her aunt, Mrs. Tom Kelly of Redwood City.
For her wedding the bride chose the navy colors of navy blue and white. She wore a navy blue suit with white accessories and a gardenia corsage.
Harold is the son of Mr. and Mrs. R.H. Ratliff of 1474 Oxford St. He is the brother of Ralph and Virginia Ratliff who attend Sequoia High School and Ralph Harold Ratliff Jr. who is now in the U.S. Army at Camp Haan. Harold also attended Sequoia High School.
At the reception the table was decorated in blue and white centered with a tiered wedding cake topped with a miniature sailor and his bride. Many gifts were received by the newlyweds.
Attending the reception were Mr. and Mrs. George Ratliff, grandparents of the groom, Mrs. Nina Mardel Lutz, aunt, and son Michael Lutz; Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Keyser, aunt and uncle, and cousins, Bonnie, Phillip and Jimmie Keyser; Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Haseltine, aunt and uncle, and Neal and Dale Haseltine; Mrs. Jasper Haseltine, aunt, and Joanne and Freddie Haseltine, and Sgt. and Mrs. Herbert England, cousins, and daughter, Sharon Lee.
Also attending were Sgt. and Mrs. John Whittington, Mr. and Mrs. Tony Alvis and sons, Mr. Norman Peterson and Kenneth Peterson, USN.
Unable to attend were Mr. Jasper Haseltine, uncle, who is now overseas with the merchant marine, Sgt. Eddie Thoemke of the U.S. Army, and Mrs. Thoemke, uncle and aunt; and Sgt. Richard Lutz, uncle, who is currently stationed in Roswell, New Mexico.
This is my cousin Virginia (Ginny) Ratliff behind their home at 1474 Oxford St in Redwood City about in the late 1940s. That area behind her would be covered with houses by 1950.
Unfortunately, Harold Ratliff’s Marriage to Virginia French only lasted a couple of years. He later married Carol Sufczynski Dierks of Redwood City on March 26,1949.
Around 1948 the Ratliff family and the business moved to a new location at 432 Middlefield Road, now a parking lot for the San Mateo County Offices. The garage was sold and they purchased an answering service, Sequoia District Physicians Exchange.
Both the businesses and the family occupied the same large house. The answering service occupied what was a large living room. Fortunately the house must have had two living rooms, because there was another room of equal size with a connecting door. The upstairs served as quarters for the ambulance crews.
There was enough room in the house to accommodate my mother and me the winters of 1951 and 1952 during the off-season for my mother’s business, Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake, CA. From November to March we lived in Redwood City. I attended Monroe School, and mom worked shifts at the answering service.
On October 08, 1949 my uncle Ralph was nearly killed in a three-car pile up on old Pacheco Pass. He was on his way to Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake in Fresno County. The resort was co-owned by my mother, and uncle Frank “Jerry” Ratliff. Every fall the family gathered at the resort during deer season. I can remember my uncle in what was nearly a full body cast lying in a hospital bed in the living room of that house on Middlefield.
Getting to Monroe School was an easy walk then because Bradford connected Middlefield Rd. and Allerton St. Ralph Junior Ratliff and his family lived at 730 Allerton diagonally across from Monroe School so they were available to point me in the right direction when I got lost my first day. In one of those little coincidences that happen now and then, my cousin’s landlady at 730 Allerton was Mrs. Mary Tesolin, the mother of Carmen Tesolin, my future wife, though I didn’t actually meet her until 1963. In 1955, my cousin Ralph Junior Ratliff and family lived in the old carriage house on property at 726-730 Allerton Street. It sat next to an old farmhouse also owned by Mary “Sironi” Tesolin, Carmen’s mother.
Both of Ralph Ratliff’s sons worked shifts for the ambulance service as well as working other jobs, so Ralph Jr. and Harold were always descending the stairs to raid the refrigerator. One of Harold’s sons, Kenny, also lived there. Ralph and Irene Ratliff assumed the responsibility of caring for Kenneth Ratliff after Harold’s divorce from his first wife Virginia. They continued to care for Kenny until he joined the Navy in 1965.
Kenny and I slept in the glassed in front porch of the house. I remember it being quite cold, especially since my aunt Irene insisted on an open window, even in mid winter. Something about the health benefits of fresh air. It was also noisy. The police radio was always on in the living room for some reason. I didn’t understand why the radio wasn’t upstairs with the ambulance guys. The house was also very close to Bayshore Highway, and there was a stop light at Middlefield and Bayshore. Trucks that stopped at the light had to rev up their engines to get moving again. On the other side were the trains. The tracks were, a few blocks away, but the trains ran all night. I don’t think I got a lotta sleep.
In the late 1950s Harold and Ralph Junior Ratliff purchased the Flying “A” service station at the corner of Middlefield and Bayshore. Ralph Sr. helped with the financing.
In 1959 Ralph Junior Ratliff left the business and eventually moved his family to Oregon leaving Harold Ratliff the sole owner of the business.
In the late 1950s the County of San Mateo decided it needed the block that housed both Peninsula Ambulance Service and Ratliff’s Flying “A” so the Ambulance Business moved to a new location, and built a new building at 1260 Marshall St., and Harold Ratliff rejoined the Ambulance Company. The building on Marshall is still there and currently occupied by Aloha Flowers (2005).
Before the Kaiser Medical Center was completed in 1968 we used to set off 4th of July fireworks in front of the Ambulance Service. Kaiser was virtually built in our front yard. During the 1960s while Kaiser was being built my entire family worked at 1260 Marshall. My uncle ran the businesses, my cousins drove ambulances, and my mother ran the medical supply for a while. My aunt ran Sequoia Physicians & Surgeons Exchange in the same building. I even worked there when I was in high school in 1963.
After I was discharged from the U.S. Navy in 1967 I used the skills that I learned as a hospital corpsman to moonlight for various ambulance services while I was attending San Francisco State University. The skills required by civilian ambulance employees were nearly identical to those skills used by a field medic (corpsman) with the U.S. Marines. I worked in the operating room at the old Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. That made it possible for me to moonlight some nights and weekends for Bob’s Ambulance Service in Oakland while still on active duty.
Often, history is what is going on in the background of a photograph so the following photographs not only show some vintage Peninsula Ambulances from the 1940s and 50s, but also shows a large facility that belonged to the Mobil Oil Company. The Mobil facility was directly across Middlefield from both Peninsula Ambulance and the Flying “A” station. You can also see a tower appears close but was actually several blocks away at Frank’s Tannery. Just across the Highway from the Flying “A” was the Redwood City Rodeo Grounds. That’s about where the Department of Motor Vehicles is located now.
In 1961 Ralph Ratliff was voted president of the California Ambulance Association. On September 6th of that same year the San Mateo Times reported that my uncle and a California Highway Patrol Officer named Fred Hagen climbed down a 400-foot cliff on Tunitas Road to rescue a 16-year-old boy who was thrown from a Jeep when it hit a tree. My uncle was 57 years old at the time and had several younger drivers on his payroll, but he enjoyed the work so much that he was still taking regular turns behind the wheel of the ambulance.
People forget that before Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and specialized rescue vehicles, ambulance services did it all. Peninsula Ambulance Service covered most of San Mateo County, from delivering a baby in La Honda to rescuing a teenager coastside. I remember hearing my uncle’s voice on the ambulance radio informing the hospital that he was coming in from Half Moon Bay with one up and two down. That meant that he had two patients on gurneys and one on a hammock like device used only in extreme emergencies.
In most cases there were no freeways, so when an ambulance was coming in from coastside, it was traveling narrow twisting roads often in the fog. Some of those roads are still no fun to drive today.
The old Five Points Hotel at 2015 El Camino Real was the location of frequent calls. There was always trouble and ambulance calls to that location were always seen as dangerous. My uncle used to always complain about employees being injured on calls to the hotel. Some of the legendary danger may have been exaggerated, but the Redwood City Police closed down the hotel in the early 1950s.
My uncle was credited with saving the life of a man whose throat had been cut in a knife fight in the “five points area” on January 17, 1955. Somehow he managed keep the man from bleeding to death from a severed jugular vein on the way to the hospital, this according to the San Mateo Times.
It wasn’t always people who were rescued. When a 16 year old boy hit a dog with his motor scooter in 1957, he not only delivered the boy with a broken leg to the hospital, but he also delivered the dog to a vet.
That same year Uncle Ralph had to descend on a sling from a crane into a concrete vat to rescue a worker with a fractured spine. The worker was a welder working on a Bayshore Freeway overpass when he leaned too far into the vat.
On May 17, 1962 Ralph Ratliff represented Redwood City at the annual hearing conducted by the California State Chamber of Commerce. The Issues were the completion of the Five Points Overpass, the Junipero Serra Freeway (280), the Skyline Freeway and the Bayfront Freeway (101). There was also resolution offered by the City of Half Moon Bay seeking to continue the so-called San Bruno Freeway (380) to Half Moon Bay.
I’m not sure where my uncle stood on the last issue. This was just a couple of years after the City of Pacifica was formed to keep from being annexed by San Bruno, and a couple of years before Pacifica tried to annex all of the communities of the coastside down to Princeton By the Sea. Development was popular then. There was even a plan to make Montara into another Linda Mar.
Unfortunately, his election to the new post came shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer. His death in March 1963 was front-page news in the Times Tribune on March 18, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, whose Peninsula Ambulance Service has provided Redwood City’s emergency transportation for 19 years died Saturday afternoon after a long battle with cancer. Mr. Ratliff, 59, came here in 1939 to establish a garage and towing service at the corner of Main Street and Old Bayshore.
In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, told Mr. Ratliff that the community should be provided with some kind of ambulance service. Mr. Ratliff decided to go into the business. He began with one vehicle and today, with headquarters at 1260 Marshall St., has five.
A native of Springfield [actually Tallula], Ill., Mr. Ratliff came to Redwood City from San Francisco. He has been identified with many civic activities throughout the years, notably as the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Highway and Traffic Committee. It was for this group that he campaigned for the widening of Jefferson Ave. and Woodside Rd., the extension of Edgewood Rd. to Half Moon Bay, and many of the local provisions of the local in the proposed city-county highway bond issue.
Mr. Ratliff also was a member of the Redwood City Exchange club, Redwood City Elks lodge, Modern Woodmen of the World and United Commercial Travelers. He was a charter member and past president of the California Ambulance Association, and was awarded a 20-year pin as a first aide instructor by the Red Cross.
Mr. Ratliff’s family will continue to run the ambulance firm.
Survivors include his widow, Irene, at the family home, 1007 Katherine St.; Sons Ralph J., Menlo Park and Harold K., Redwood City; a daughter; Mrs. Virginia Collins, Los Altos and a son by a previous marriage, Ralph H. Ratliff Jr. of Los Angeles. A Sister, Mrs. Mardel Womer [My mother’s married name with her second husband] resides in Redwood City. There are 15 grandchildren.
Private Funeral Services were held at Lyng & Tinney Funeral Home, 717 Jefferson Ave. Mr. Ratliff willed his body to Stanford Medical School for research.
The family prefers contributions to the American Cancer Society, 1517 South B St., San Mateo.
And in another article on March 25, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, A Valuable Citizen
It was no longer news to his friends when it appeared in Monday’s paper that Ralph H. Ratliff had succumbed. Mr. Ratliff had been stricken with cancer more than a year ago, and hope for survival disappeared long ago but Mr. Ratliff refused to give up.
He knew that there were many jobs to be done, and he was going to do his best to get some results while he was still able to do so.
Mr. Ratliff was one of the developers of an excellent ambulance for Peninsulans. He wasn’t merely satisfied to transport to the hospital; he became an expert in first aide and his careful handling of patients was in many cases the difference between life and death.
Mr. Ratliff didn’t confine himself to matter involving his own profession. He was civic minded, and in this too he put in his best effort. Hi thorough study of Redwood City’s street and traffic problems, made at the request of the Chamber of Commerce, has been used as a model by both city and county governments in planning for the future.
Much of his best work came after he knew that he would never be able to shake the cancer that was spreading through his body.
This effort and enthusiasm ….the will to keep working for the public’s benefit even while knowing that he would reap none of the benefits…made Ralph H. Ratliff one of Redwood City’s most valuable citizens.
The entire community shares with his family this deep loss.
The family tried to continue the business together, but as often happens in these situations, there was disagreement about how the business should be run, so Harold Ratliff established a competing service, California Ambulance.
Harold Ratliff in the California Ambulance Office about 1970
California Ambulance Service was moderately successful but the move by San Mateo County to station emergency medical responders to fire stations left only non-emergency transport work to private ambulance companies. Eventually, both Peninsula Ambulance Service and California Ambulance Service merged with Mercy Ambulance Service in Daly City to form Mercy-Peninsula Ambulance.
Irene Ratliff retired and moved to Oregon to be close to her children. Harold worked at Raychem in Menlo Park until his death on May 06, 1985. He died of a heart attack behind the wheel of his car on El Camino Real.
Times Tribune May 08, 1985
Harold Ratliff, 59, Known as “Ratliff the Magician” to scores of Peninsula children and church groups, and a resident of Redwood City for over 40 years, died Monday in Mills Memorial Hospital after a sudden illness. He was a native of San Francisco.
He was a Navy veteran of World War II and served in the Pacific. In recent years he worked for Raychem in Menlo Park.
As a magician he performed for churches, children’s parties and many organizations.
Survivors include his wife Carol, his wife of 37 years; his sons, Kenneth of San Jose and Donald and Robert of Oregon; daughters Donna Knerr of Texas, Sandra Ebaugh of Mountain View and Barbara Ferriera of Florida; brothers Ralph J. of Oregon and Ralph H. of Los Angeles; a sister, Virginia Collins of Pasadena; his mother, Irene Ratliff of Oregon.
Private services have been held with internment in Golden Gate National Cemetery at San Bruno under direction of the Redwood Chapel, Redwood City. The family suggests memorial gifts to the American Heart Association.
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MID-CITY - The Los Angeles Fire Department rescued three pet cats from a smoke-charged Mid-City apartment Wednesday evening, as they battled the flames of a kitchen fire, but only one of the pets was able to be successfully resuscitated by responders.
The first of several 9-1-1 calls were received at 5:19 PM on October 19, 2022, summoning LAFD Firefighters to the 5100 block of West Pickford Avenue in the Mid-City area of Los Angeles.
Firefighters arrived quickly to find smoke showing from one downstairs unit of an eight unit two-story apartment building. Though witnesses described the apartment's two occupants as having recently departed, LAFD personnel commenced a well-coordinated interior attack on the flames with a simultaneous search of the premises, to assure no person or pet was in peril.
Despite heat, thick smoke and excessive personal storage within the unit, the firefighter search team quickly determined there were no human occupants, but discovered three seemingly lifeless cats, which were swiftly moved outdoors to fresh air where #lifesaving efforts were commenced.
Though two of the cats were sadly determined to be beyond medical help, the third was confirmed to have a pulse and be breathing, and was provided oxygen by LAFD responders. Following 10 minutes of continuous oxygen therapy and hands-on care, the surviving cat stood up and interacted with firefighters.
Twenty-nine LAFD Firefighters under the command of Battalion Chief Paul Pham, took less than eight minutes to access, confine and fully extinguish flames within the kitchen area of the apartment. No civilian or responder injuries were reported.
Though the fire appeared to have originated near a sizeable amount of electrical equipment kept within the kitchen, the specific cause of the fire is undetermined.
Monetary loss from the fire is still being tabulated. The 4,585 square-foot apartment building, constructed in 1930, did not feature optional fire sprinklers.
The surviving cat was entrusted to the temporary care of a neighbor, until the pet owner's return.
Photo Use Permitted via Creative Commons - Credit: LAFD
LAFD Incident 101922-1297
Connect with us: LAFD.ORG | News | Facebook | Instagram | Reddit | Twitter: @LAFD @LAFDtalk
I took these photos inside the infectious ward of the Karol Jonschers Children's Hospital, Poznań. It was a time when epidemic armageddon caused by RSV and the next wave of covid was going through pediatric wards. All isolation rooms were then occupied by infected children under the care of a parent. In the corridor there are rows of cardboard boxes with overalls, spare beds. Some kids were treated with oxygen. Less than 2-year-old kid subjected to high-flow oxygen therapy. Only there were fewer ventilators here than in adults. But they also happened.
The photos would not have been made without help and kindness from the crew of Department VIII. Special thanks are due to prof. dr hab. n. med. Magdalena Figlerowicz and Karolina Samarzewska, MA, who agreed to the presence of a annoying man with a camera in their clinic.
Autmn/winter 22/23. Poznań, PL.
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www.sfgenealogy.com/sanmateo/history/ambulance/smambulanc...
As remembered by
Michael Ratliff Lutz
Introduction:
When I began researching my family’s history in Redwood City, California in the year 2004 I was certain that I would be able to find a lot of information about my uncle, Ralph H. Ratliff since his death in March of 1963 was front-page news in The Redwood City Tribune. To my surprise, he was nearly a forgotten man. The local historical societies only had a couple of old newspaper clippings. I only had the clippings and photos that my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff (Lutz) (Womer), had saved in her scrapbook over the years to work with. With the help of a few relatives I have been able to reconstruct the story of Ralph Ratliff and his Peninsula Ambulance Service.
Ratliff Enterprises as described in a 1961 Redwood City Tribune article:
Twelve women in three shifts work around the clock with their fingers virtually on the pulse of a vast segment of professional and business life. These women answer a monthly average of 38,000 telephone calls.
They are employees of Ratliff Enterprises, Inc a family owner corporation occupying its own two-story building at 1260 Marshall Street. Ratliff Enterprises operates the Redwood City Telephone Answering Service, which embraces the Sequoia District Physicians Exchange. It also operates the Peninsula Ambulance Service and the Peninsula Hospital Rental Service. Its ambulances respond to 500 calls monthly. The County of San Mateo subsidizes peninsula Ambulance Service.
Its rental service rents out anything needed for the care of patients in the home…such things as oxygen, refrigerated tents, wheel chairs, therapy lamps, traction equipment and beds.
The officers of the corporation are Ralph H. Ratliff, president: his wife Irene I. Ratliff: vice president their two sons and a daughter, K. Harold Ratliff and Ralph J. Ratliff, and Mrs. Virginia Collins, directors. Mrs. Ratliff manages the answering service with Mrs. Collins as the assistant manager. Harold is the manager and bookkeeper of the ambulance and rental divisions.
Mateo County uses a subsidy system with Peninsula Ambulance Service so they could discontinue their own emergency ambulance service. If the company couldn’t collect from individuals, the county would reimburse them $20 per call for all service ordered through police systems. Most calls came through the Sheriffs Office.
In 1960 Peninsula Ambulance received a subsidy of $18,000, a considerable savings compared to what it would have cost to operate their own system. Ambulance employees were taught advanced Red Cross first aide, basic obstetrics and oxygen therapy.
As to obstetrics, Ralph Ratliff personally delivered 10 babies while working shifts with his ambulance crews, three of these births occurred in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. It just happened that 10 mothers waited until the very last minute. Unlike in the storybooks, none of the babies were named after him.
The ambulance fees are $25 per call plus supplies used at the accident scene like splints and oxygen, and $12.50 if a second patient on a stretcher was involved. A third person with minor injuries could ride with the driver for free.
I was able to find reports of two of those baby deliveries in the San Mateo Times archives, one in La Honda on July 14, 1949, and another in the back of the ambulance on August 21 1957. It is true that neither baby was named Ralph after my uncle, but then again, they were both girls.
Oops, I nearly missed the boy he delivered on July 2, 1954. He wasn’t named Ralph either.
Recent generations probably don’t realize that emergency medical service used to be provided by private ambulance companies. Until the late 1970s when EMTs were stationed in firehouses, private ambulance services like Peninsula Ambulance Service and Harold Ratliff’s California Ambulance Service would respond to medical emergencies. Ambulance personnel received advanced first aide training from the American Red Cross. In fact, Ralph Ratliff was a first aide instructor for the Red Cross for several years. The classes were taught at the Sequoia Chapter of the American Red Cross, 3540 Middlefield Road in Menlo Park. There were six, two-hour sessions taught in the evening, ending in a Red Cross certificate for those who passed the course.
I’m probably not the best person to tell the story of Peninsula Ambulance since my contact with this part of my family was rather inconsistent over the years. My mother was half owner of Home Creek Resort at Huntington lake in Fresno County so except for two years in 1951 and 1952 when we wintered over with Ralph Ratliff’s family in Redwood City, my contact was limited to a couple of weeks on vacation every year. In my senior high school year, 1962-63 we moved to Redwood City, but that was just a few months before my uncle died. There was a time when you couldn’t go anywhere in Redwood City without bumping into a member of the Ratliff family, but now it seems I’m the only one left. Fortunately, my mother saved numerous newspaper articles and photographs that should be helpful.
Ralph H. Ratliff was born in Tallula, Illinois on November 05, 1903 to George O. and Carrie Ratliff of Jacksonville, Illinois. The family, including his older brother Frank Jerry Ratliff, and younger sister and my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff later moved to Los Angeles then to San Francisco in the 1920s. My grandfather, George O. Ratliff was in the real estate business but Ralph found working on cars more to his liking, so for several years he worked as an auto mechanic in San Francisco.
Prior to leaving Los Angeles, Ralph had a brief marriage to Mildred Hensley, and a son Ralph H. Ratliff Jr., born October 14, 1922. Ralph Jr. moved to San Francisco with the rest of the family and was cared for by my mother and grandmother until Ralph married Irene I. Haseltine of Redwood City in Palo Alto, California on May 8, 1925. Their first son, Kenneth “Harold” Ratliff was born November 04, 1925. They had two additional children, Ralph Junior Ratliff, born January 25, 1927 and Virginia Lois Ratliff, born May 21, 1928.
Irene Haseltine was a Redwood City girl, her emigrated to Redwood City from Wisconsin in the early 1900s. Ralph and Irene Ratliff continued to live in San Francisco until 1939 when, with financial assistance from his father George Ratliff, he opened the Peninsula Garage in Redwood City.
The first location of the Peninsula Garage was near Bayshore Highway, near Main and Bradford today. This section of Bayshore is now Veteran’s Blvd. The location near the highway made it easier for both the towing business and the ambulance business to respond quickly. When they moved to 432 Middlefield Rd. they were about the same distance from the highway as they were at Main and Bradford. There were no freeways then. The highways all had stoplights at major intersections. Bayshore Highway had only two lanes in each direction with no center divider. There were very few buildings along old Bayshore but there were a lot of billboards
Towing was a large part of the Peninsula Garage business. It was the towing business that got Ralph Ratliff started in the ambulance business. Ralph’s tow trucks were arriving at auto accident scenes long before the ambulance arrived. In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, asked my uncle to provide the community with some kind of ambulance service. Ralph purchased a used ambulance from a taxicab company, took first aide classes, and went into business. It’s not clear why a taxi company had an ambulance.
At first the Peninsula Garage and Peninsula Ambulance coexisted at the same address at 450 Main St., Redwood City. They also shared the same phone number for a while which probably caused some confusion, but there is no record of a tow truck responding to an ambulance call.
During the early 1940s the Ratliff family lived on Oxford Street in Redwood City. Oxford Street was pretty much out in the country then. There were very few other houses around. Later they moved to a large white house at 432 Middlefield Rd. near the corner of old Bayshore Highway. That location is now a county parking lot. That house also served as the base for the ambulance service.
This article about my cousin Harold Ratliff’s wedding reception pretty much sums up the Ratliff family in Redwood City during World War 2. My mother was living with the Ratliff’s on Oxford Street then. My father was away in the army and I was just born a month before or so before the article was written so it was easier for her to live with relatives. I was at this reception but don’t remember much.
Ironically, I was born in San Francisco. My family was from San Francisco but by 1944 my grand parents had moved to Burlingame and my mother was living in Redwood City. They all decided to go to a fireworks display at Kezar stadium in 1944, and that’s when and where I was born.
Redwood City Tribune, August 1944:
A large wedding party and reception was held in honor of newly wedded Mr. and Mrs. Harold Kenneth Ratliff, the former Miss Virginia Alberta French of San Francisco, at the home of the groom’s grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Alva Haseltine of 479 Sequoia Ave. last week.
Because of Harold’s short leave from the navy, in which he is a seaman second class, the couple was married in Reno on Aug. 23. They met several years ago when Virginia visited her aunt, Mrs. Tom Kelly of Redwood City.
For her wedding the bride chose the navy colors of navy blue and white. She wore a navy blue suit with white accessories and a gardenia corsage.
Harold is the son of Mr. and Mrs. R.H. Ratliff of 1474 Oxford St. He is the brother of Ralph and Virginia Ratliff who attend Sequoia High School and Ralph Harold Ratliff Jr. who is now in the U.S. Army at Camp Haan. Harold also attended Sequoia High School.
At the reception the table was decorated in blue and white centered with a tiered wedding cake topped with a miniature sailor and his bride. Many gifts were received by the newlyweds.
Attending the reception were Mr. and Mrs. George Ratliff, grandparents of the groom, Mrs. Nina Mardel Lutz, aunt, and son Michael Lutz; Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Keyser, aunt and uncle, and cousins, Bonnie, Phillip and Jimmie Keyser; Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Haseltine, aunt and uncle, and Neal and Dale Haseltine; Mrs. Jasper Haseltine, aunt, and Joanne and Freddie Haseltine, and Sgt. and Mrs. Herbert England, cousins, and daughter, Sharon Lee.
Also attending were Sgt. and Mrs. John Whittington, Mr. and Mrs. Tony Alvis and sons, Mr. Norman Peterson and Kenneth Peterson, USN.
Unable to attend were Mr. Jasper Haseltine, uncle, who is now overseas with the merchant marine, Sgt. Eddie Thoemke of the U.S. Army, and Mrs. Thoemke, uncle and aunt; and Sgt. Richard Lutz, uncle, who is currently stationed in Roswell, New Mexico.
This is my cousin Virginia (Ginny) Ratliff behind their home at 1474 Oxford St in Redwood City about in the late 1940s. That area behind her would be covered with houses by 1950.
Unfortunately, Harold Ratliff’s Marriage to Virginia French only lasted a couple of years. He later married Carol Sufczynski Dierks of Redwood City on March 26,1949.
Around 1948 the Ratliff family and the business moved to a new location at 432 Middlefield Road, now a parking lot for the San Mateo County Offices. The garage was sold and they purchased an answering service, Sequoia District Physicians Exchange.
Both the businesses and the family occupied the same large house. The answering service occupied what was a large living room. Fortunately the house must have had two living rooms, because there was another room of equal size with a connecting door. The upstairs served as quarters for the ambulance crews.
There was enough room in the house to accommodate my mother and me the winters of 1951 and 1952 during the off-season for my mother’s business, Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake, CA. From November to March we lived in Redwood City. I attended Monroe School, and mom worked shifts at the answering service.
On October 08, 1949 my uncle Ralph was nearly killed in a three-car pile up on old Pacheco Pass. He was on his way to Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake in Fresno County. The resort was co-owned by my mother, and uncle Frank “Jerry” Ratliff. Every fall the family gathered at the resort during deer season. I can remember my uncle in what was nearly a full body cast lying in a hospital bed in the living room of that house on Middlefield.
Getting to Monroe School was an easy walk then because Bradford connected Middlefield Rd. and Allerton St. Ralph Junior Ratliff and his family lived at 730 Allerton diagonally across from Monroe School so they were available to point me in the right direction when I got lost my first day. In one of those little coincidences that happen now and then, my cousin’s landlady at 730 Allerton was Mrs. Mary Tesolin, the mother of Carmen Tesolin, my future wife, though I didn’t actually meet her until 1963. In 1955, my cousin Ralph Junior Ratliff and family lived in the old carriage house on property at 726-730 Allerton Street. It sat next to an old farmhouse also owned by Mary “Sironi” Tesolin, Carmen’s mother.
Both of Ralph Ratliff’s sons worked shifts for the ambulance service as well as working other jobs, so Ralph Jr. and Harold were always descending the stairs to raid the refrigerator. One of Harold’s sons, Kenny, also lived there. Ralph and Irene Ratliff assumed the responsibility of caring for Kenneth Ratliff after Harold’s divorce from his first wife Virginia. They continued to care for Kenny until he joined the Navy in 1965.
Kenny and I slept in the glassed in front porch of the house. I remember it being quite cold, especially since my aunt Irene insisted on an open window, even in mid winter. Something about the health benefits of fresh air. It was also noisy. The police radio was always on in the living room for some reason. I didn’t understand why the radio wasn’t upstairs with the ambulance guys. The house was also very close to Bayshore Highway, and there was a stop light at Middlefield and Bayshore. Trucks that stopped at the light had to rev up their engines to get moving again. On the other side were the trains. The tracks were, a few blocks away, but the trains ran all night. I don’t think I got a lotta sleep.
In the late 1950s Harold and Ralph Junior Ratliff purchased the Flying “A” service station at the corner of Middlefield and Bayshore. Ralph Sr. helped with the financing.
In 1959 Ralph Junior Ratliff left the business and eventually moved his family to Oregon leaving Harold Ratliff the sole owner of the business.
In the late 1950s the County of San Mateo decided it needed the block that housed both Peninsula Ambulance Service and Ratliff’s Flying “A” so the Ambulance Business moved to a new location, and built a new building at 1260 Marshall St., and Harold Ratliff rejoined the Ambulance Company. The building on Marshall is still there and currently occupied by Aloha Flowers (2005).
Before the Kaiser Medical Center was completed in 1968 we used to set off 4th of July fireworks in front of the Ambulance Service. Kaiser was virtually built in our front yard. During the 1960s while Kaiser was being built my entire family worked at 1260 Marshall. My uncle ran the businesses, my cousins drove ambulances, and my mother ran the medical supply for a while. My aunt ran Sequoia Physicians & Surgeons Exchange in the same building. I even worked there when I was in high school in 1963.
After I was discharged from the U.S. Navy in 1967 I used the skills that I learned as a hospital corpsman to moonlight for various ambulance services while I was attending San Francisco State University. The skills required by civilian ambulance employees were nearly identical to those skills used by a field medic (corpsman) with the U.S. Marines. I worked in the operating room at the old Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. That made it possible for me to moonlight some nights and weekends for Bob’s Ambulance Service in Oakland while still on active duty.
Often, history is what is going on in the background of a photograph so the following photographs not only show some vintage Peninsula Ambulances from the 1940s and 50s, but also shows a large facility that belonged to the Mobil Oil Company. The Mobil facility was directly across Middlefield from both Peninsula Ambulance and the Flying “A” station. You can also see a tower appears close but was actually several blocks away at Frank’s Tannery. Just across the Highway from the Flying “A” was the Redwood City Rodeo Grounds. That’s about where the Department of Motor Vehicles is located now.
In 1961 Ralph Ratliff was voted president of the California Ambulance Association. On September 6th of that same year the San Mateo Times reported that my uncle and a California Highway Patrol Officer named Fred Hagen climbed down a 400-foot cliff on Tunitas Road to rescue a 16-year-old boy who was thrown from a Jeep when it hit a tree. My uncle was 57 years old at the time and had several younger drivers on his payroll, but he enjoyed the work so much that he was still taking regular turns behind the wheel of the ambulance.
People forget that before Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and specialized rescue vehicles, ambulance services did it all. Peninsula Ambulance Service covered most of San Mateo County, from delivering a baby in La Honda to rescuing a teenager coastside. I remember hearing my uncle’s voice on the ambulance radio informing the hospital that he was coming in from Half Moon Bay with one up and two down. That meant that he had two patients on gurneys and one on a hammock like device used only in extreme emergencies.
In most cases there were no freeways, so when an ambulance was coming in from coastside, it was traveling narrow twisting roads often in the fog. Some of those roads are still no fun to drive today.
The old Five Points Hotel at 2015 El Camino Real was the location of frequent calls. There was always trouble and ambulance calls to that location were always seen as dangerous. My uncle used to always complain about employees being injured on calls to the hotel. Some of the legendary danger may have been exaggerated, but the Redwood City Police closed down the hotel in the early 1950s.
My uncle was credited with saving the life of a man whose throat had been cut in a knife fight in the “five points area” on January 17, 1955. Somehow he managed keep the man from bleeding to death from a severed jugular vein on the way to the hospital, this according to the San Mateo Times.
It wasn’t always people who were rescued. When a 16 year old boy hit a dog with his motor scooter in 1957, he not only delivered the boy with a broken leg to the hospital, but he also delivered the dog to a vet.
That same year Uncle Ralph had to descend on a sling from a crane into a concrete vat to rescue a worker with a fractured spine. The worker was a welder working on a Bayshore Freeway overpass when he leaned too far into the vat.
On May 17, 1962 Ralph Ratliff represented Redwood City at the annual hearing conducted by the California State Chamber of Commerce. The Issues were the completion of the Five Points Overpass, the Junipero Serra Freeway (280), the Skyline Freeway and the Bayfront Freeway (101). There was also resolution offered by the City of Half Moon Bay seeking to continue the so-called San Bruno Freeway (380) to Half Moon Bay.
I’m not sure where my uncle stood on the last issue. This was just a couple of years after the City of Pacifica was formed to keep from being annexed by San Bruno, and a couple of years before Pacifica tried to annex all of the communities of the coastside down to Princeton By the Sea. Development was popular then. There was even a plan to make Montara into another Linda Mar.
Unfortunately, his election to the new post came shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer. His death in March 1963 was front-page news in the Times Tribune on March 18, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, whose Peninsula Ambulance Service has provided Redwood City’s emergency transportation for 19 years died Saturday afternoon after a long battle with cancer. Mr. Ratliff, 59, came here in 1939 to establish a garage and towing service at the corner of Main Street and Old Bayshore.
In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, told Mr. Ratliff that the community should be provided with some kind of ambulance service. Mr. Ratliff decided to go into the business. He began with one vehicle and today, with headquarters at 1260 Marshall St., has five.
A native of Springfield [actually Tallula], Ill., Mr. Ratliff came to Redwood City from San Francisco. He has been identified with many civic activities throughout the years, notably as the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Highway and Traffic Committee. It was for this group that he campaigned for the widening of Jefferson Ave. and Woodside Rd., the extension of Edgewood Rd. to Half Moon Bay, and many of the local provisions of the local in the proposed city-county highway bond issue.
Mr. Ratliff also was a member of the Redwood City Exchange club, Redwood City Elks lodge, Modern Woodmen of the World and United Commercial Travelers. He was a charter member and past president of the California Ambulance Association, and was awarded a 20-year pin as a first aide instructor by the Red Cross.
Mr. Ratliff’s family will continue to run the ambulance firm.
Survivors include his widow, Irene, at the family home, 1007 Katherine St.; Sons Ralph J., Menlo Park and Harold K., Redwood City; a daughter; Mrs. Virginia Collins, Los Altos and a son by a previous marriage, Ralph H. Ratliff Jr. of Los Angeles. A Sister, Mrs. Mardel Womer [My mother’s married name with her second husband] resides in Redwood City. There are 15 grandchildren.
Private Funeral Services were held at Lyng & Tinney Funeral Home, 717 Jefferson Ave. Mr. Ratliff willed his body to Stanford Medical School for research.
The family prefers contributions to the American Cancer Society, 1517 South B St., San Mateo.
And in another article on March 25, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, A Valuable Citizen
It was no longer news to his friends when it appeared in Monday’s paper that Ralph H. Ratliff had succumbed. Mr. Ratliff had been stricken with cancer more than a year ago, and hope for survival disappeared long ago but Mr. Ratliff refused to give up.
He knew that there were many jobs to be done, and he was going to do his best to get some results while he was still able to do so.
Mr. Ratliff was one of the developers of an excellent ambulance for Peninsulans. He wasn’t merely satisfied to transport to the hospital; he became an expert in first aide and his careful handling of patients was in many cases the difference between life and death.
Mr. Ratliff didn’t confine himself to matter involving his own profession. He was civic minded, and in this too he put in his best effort. Hi thorough study of Redwood City’s street and traffic problems, made at the request of the Chamber of Commerce, has been used as a model by both city and county governments in planning for the future.
Much of his best work came after he knew that he would never be able to shake the cancer that was spreading through his body.
This effort and enthusiasm ….the will to keep working for the public’s benefit even while knowing that he would reap none of the benefits…made Ralph H. Ratliff one of Redwood City’s most valuable citizens.
The entire community shares with his family this deep loss.
The family tried to continue the business together, but as often happens in these situations, there was disagreement about how the business should be run, so Harold Ratliff established a competing service, California Ambulance.
Harold Ratliff in the California Ambulance Office about 1970
California Ambulance Service was moderately successful but the move by San Mateo County to station emergency medical responders to fire stations left only non-emergency transport work to private ambulance companies. Eventually, both Peninsula Ambulance Service and California Ambulance Service merged with Mercy Ambulance Service in Daly City to form Mercy-Peninsula Ambulance.
Irene Ratliff retired and moved to Oregon to be close to her children. Harold worked at Raychem in Menlo Park until his death on May 06, 1985. He died of a heart attack behind the wheel of his car on El Camino Real.
Times Tribune May 08, 1985
Harold Ratliff, 59, Known as “Ratliff the Magician” to scores of Peninsula children and church groups, and a resident of Redwood City for over 40 years, died Monday in Mills Memorial Hospital after a sudden illness. He was a native of San Francisco.
He was a Navy veteran of World War II and served in the Pacific. In recent years he worked for Raychem in Menlo Park.
As a magician he performed for churches, children’s parties and many organizations.
Survivors include his wife Carol, his wife of 37 years; his sons, Kenneth of San Jose and Donald and Robert of Oregon; daughters Donna Knerr of Texas, Sandra Ebaugh of Mountain View and Barbara Ferriera of Florida; brothers Ralph J. of Oregon and Ralph H. of Los Angeles; a sister, Virginia Collins of Pasadena; his mother, Irene Ratliff of Oregon.
Private services have been held with internment in Golden Gate National Cemetery at San Bruno under direction of the Redwood Chapel, Redwood City. The family suggests memorial gifts to the American Heart Association.
© Copyright 1996-2010 SFgenealogy. All rights reserved.
Ratliff family 1944.
www.sfgenealogy.com/sanmateo/history/ambulance/smambulanc...
As remembered by
Michael Ratliff Lutz
Introduction:
When I began researching my family’s history in Redwood City, California in the year 2004 I was certain that I would be able to find a lot of information about my uncle, Ralph H. Ratliff since his death in March of 1963 was front-page news in The Redwood City Tribune. To my surprise, he was nearly a forgotten man. The local historical societies only had a couple of old newspaper clippings. I only had the clippings and photos that my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff (Lutz) (Womer), had saved in her scrapbook over the years to work with. With the help of a few relatives I have been able to reconstruct the story of Ralph Ratliff and his Peninsula Ambulance Service.
Ratliff Enterprises as described in a 1961 Redwood City Tribune article:
Twelve women in three shifts work around the clock with their fingers virtually on the pulse of a vast segment of professional and business life. These women answer a monthly average of 38,000 telephone calls.
They are employees of Ratliff Enterprises, Inc a family owner corporation occupying its own two-story building at 1260 Marshall Street. Ratliff Enterprises operates the Redwood City Telephone Answering Service, which embraces the Sequoia District Physicians Exchange. It also operates the Peninsula Ambulance Service and the Peninsula Hospital Rental Service. Its ambulances respond to 500 calls monthly. The County of San Mateo subsidizes peninsula Ambulance Service.
Its rental service rents out anything needed for the care of patients in the home…such things as oxygen, refrigerated tents, wheel chairs, therapy lamps, traction equipment and beds.
The officers of the corporation are Ralph H. Ratliff, president: his wife Irene I. Ratliff: vice president their two sons and a daughter, K. Harold Ratliff and Ralph J. Ratliff, and Mrs. Virginia Collins, directors. Mrs. Ratliff manages the answering service with Mrs. Collins as the assistant manager. Harold is the manager and bookkeeper of the ambulance and rental divisions.
Mateo County uses a subsidy system with Peninsula Ambulance Service so they could discontinue their own emergency ambulance service. If the company couldn’t collect from individuals, the county would reimburse them $20 per call for all service ordered through police systems. Most calls came through the Sheriffs Office.
In 1960 Peninsula Ambulance received a subsidy of $18,000, a considerable savings compared to what it would have cost to operate their own system. Ambulance employees were taught advanced Red Cross first aide, basic obstetrics and oxygen therapy.
As to obstetrics, Ralph Ratliff personally delivered 10 babies while working shifts with his ambulance crews, three of these births occurred in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. It just happened that 10 mothers waited until the very last minute. Unlike in the storybooks, none of the babies were named after him.
The ambulance fees are $25 per call plus supplies used at the accident scene like splints and oxygen, and $12.50 if a second patient on a stretcher was involved. A third person with minor injuries could ride with the driver for free.
I was able to find reports of two of those baby deliveries in the San Mateo Times archives, one in La Honda on July 14, 1949, and another in the back of the ambulance on August 21 1957. It is true that neither baby was named Ralph after my uncle, but then again, they were both girls.
Oops, I nearly missed the boy he delivered on July 2, 1954. He wasn’t named Ralph either.
Recent generations probably don’t realize that emergency medical service used to be provided by private ambulance companies. Until the late 1970s when EMTs were stationed in firehouses, private ambulance services like Peninsula Ambulance Service and Harold Ratliff’s California Ambulance Service would respond to medical emergencies. Ambulance personnel received advanced first aide training from the American Red Cross. In fact, Ralph Ratliff was a first aide instructor for the Red Cross for several years. The classes were taught at the Sequoia Chapter of the American Red Cross, 3540 Middlefield Road in Menlo Park. There were six, two-hour sessions taught in the evening, ending in a Red Cross certificate for those who passed the course.
I’m probably not the best person to tell the story of Peninsula Ambulance since my contact with this part of my family was rather inconsistent over the years. My mother was half owner of Home Creek Resort at Huntington lake in Fresno County so except for two years in 1951 and 1952 when we wintered over with Ralph Ratliff’s family in Redwood City, my contact was limited to a couple of weeks on vacation every year. In my senior high school year, 1962-63 we moved to Redwood City, but that was just a few months before my uncle died. There was a time when you couldn’t go anywhere in Redwood City without bumping into a member of the Ratliff family, but now it seems I’m the only one left. Fortunately, my mother saved numerous newspaper articles and photographs that should be helpful.
Ralph H. Ratliff was born in Tallula, Illinois on November 05, 1903 to George O. and Carrie Ratliff of Jacksonville, Illinois. The family, including his older brother Frank Jerry Ratliff, and younger sister and my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff later moved to Los Angeles then to San Francisco in the 1920s. My grandfather, George O. Ratliff was in the real estate business but Ralph found working on cars more to his liking, so for several years he worked as an auto mechanic in San Francisco.
Prior to leaving Los Angeles, Ralph had a brief marriage to Mildred Hensley, and a son Ralph H. Ratliff Jr., born October 14, 1922. Ralph Jr. moved to San Francisco with the rest of the family and was cared for by my mother and grandmother until Ralph married Irene I. Haseltine of Redwood City in Palo Alto, California on May 8, 1925. Their first son, Kenneth “Harold” Ratliff was born November 04, 1925. They had two additional children, Ralph Junior Ratliff, born January 25, 1927 and Virginia Lois Ratliff, born May 21, 1928.
Irene Haseltine was a Redwood City girl, her emigrated to Redwood City from Wisconsin in the early 1900s. Ralph and Irene Ratliff continued to live in San Francisco until 1939 when, with financial assistance from his father George Ratliff, he opened the Peninsula Garage in Redwood City.
The first location of the Peninsula Garage was near Bayshore Highway, near Main and Bradford today. This section of Bayshore is now Veteran’s Blvd. The location near the highway made it easier for both the towing business and the ambulance business to respond quickly. When they moved to 432 Middlefield Rd. they were about the same distance from the highway as they were at Main and Bradford. There were no freeways then. The highways all had stoplights at major intersections. Bayshore Highway had only two lanes in each direction with no center divider. There were very few buildings along old Bayshore but there were a lot of billboards
Towing was a large part of the Peninsula Garage business. It was the towing business that got Ralph Ratliff started in the ambulance business. Ralph’s tow trucks were arriving at auto accident scenes long before the ambulance arrived. In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, asked my uncle to provide the community with some kind of ambulance service. Ralph purchased a used ambulance from a taxicab company, took first aide classes, and went into business. It’s not clear why a taxi company had an ambulance.
At first the Peninsula Garage and Peninsula Ambulance coexisted at the same address at 450 Main St., Redwood City. They also shared the same phone number for a while which probably caused some confusion, but there is no record of a tow truck responding to an ambulance call.
During the early 1940s the Ratliff family lived on Oxford Street in Redwood City. Oxford Street was pretty much out in the country then. There were very few other houses around. Later they moved to a large white house at 432 Middlefield Rd. near the corner of old Bayshore Highway. That location is now a county parking lot. That house also served as the base for the ambulance service.
This article about my cousin Harold Ratliff’s wedding reception pretty much sums up the Ratliff family in Redwood City during World War 2. My mother was living with the Ratliff’s on Oxford Street then. My father was away in the army and I was just born a month before or so before the article was written so it was easier for her to live with relatives. I was at this reception but don’t remember much.
Ironically, I was born in San Francisco. My family was from San Francisco but by 1944 my grand parents had moved to Burlingame and my mother was living in Redwood City. They all decided to go to a fireworks display at Kezar stadium in 1944, and that’s when and where I was born.
Redwood City Tribune, August 1944:
A large wedding party and reception was held in honor of newly wedded Mr. and Mrs. Harold Kenneth Ratliff, the former Miss Virginia Alberta French of San Francisco, at the home of the groom’s grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Alva Haseltine of 479 Sequoia Ave. last week.
Because of Harold’s short leave from the navy, in which he is a seaman second class, the couple was married in Reno on Aug. 23. They met several years ago when Virginia visited her aunt, Mrs. Tom Kelly of Redwood City.
For her wedding the bride chose the navy colors of navy blue and white. She wore a navy blue suit with white accessories and a gardenia corsage.
Harold is the son of Mr. and Mrs. R.H. Ratliff of 1474 Oxford St. He is the brother of Ralph and Virginia Ratliff who attend Sequoia High School and Ralph Harold Ratliff Jr. who is now in the U.S. Army at Camp Haan. Harold also attended Sequoia High School.
At the reception the table was decorated in blue and white centered with a tiered wedding cake topped with a miniature sailor and his bride. Many gifts were received by the newlyweds.
Attending the reception were Mr. and Mrs. George Ratliff, grandparents of the groom, Mrs. Nina Mardel Lutz, aunt, and son Michael Lutz; Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Keyser, aunt and uncle, and cousins, Bonnie, Phillip and Jimmie Keyser; Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Haseltine, aunt and uncle, and Neal and Dale Haseltine; Mrs. Jasper Haseltine, aunt, and Joanne and Freddie Haseltine, and Sgt. and Mrs. Herbert England, cousins, and daughter, Sharon Lee.
Also attending were Sgt. and Mrs. John Whittington, Mr. and Mrs. Tony Alvis and sons, Mr. Norman Peterson and Kenneth Peterson, USN.
Unable to attend were Mr. Jasper Haseltine, uncle, who is now overseas with the merchant marine, Sgt. Eddie Thoemke of the U.S. Army, and Mrs. Thoemke, uncle and aunt; and Sgt. Richard Lutz, uncle, who is currently stationed in Roswell, New Mexico.
This is my cousin Virginia (Ginny) Ratliff behind their home at 1474 Oxford St in Redwood City about in the late 1940s. That area behind her would be covered with houses by 1950.
Unfortunately, Harold Ratliff’s Marriage to Virginia French only lasted a couple of years. He later married Carol Sufczynski Dierks of Redwood City on March 26,1949.
Around 1948 the Ratliff family and the business moved to a new location at 432 Middlefield Road, now a parking lot for the San Mateo County Offices. The garage was sold and they purchased an answering service, Sequoia District Physicians Exchange.
Both the businesses and the family occupied the same large house. The answering service occupied what was a large living room. Fortunately the house must have had two living rooms, because there was another room of equal size with a connecting door. The upstairs served as quarters for the ambulance crews.
There was enough room in the house to accommodate my mother and me the winters of 1951 and 1952 during the off-season for my mother’s business, Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake, CA. From November to March we lived in Redwood City. I attended Monroe School, and mom worked shifts at the answering service.
On October 08, 1949 my uncle Ralph was nearly killed in a three-car pile up on old Pacheco Pass. He was on his way to Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake in Fresno County. The resort was co-owned by my mother, and uncle Frank “Jerry” Ratliff. Every fall the family gathered at the resort during deer season. I can remember my uncle in what was nearly a full body cast lying in a hospital bed in the living room of that house on Middlefield.
Getting to Monroe School was an easy walk then because Bradford connected Middlefield Rd. and Allerton St. Ralph Junior Ratliff and his family lived at 730 Allerton diagonally across from Monroe School so they were available to point me in the right direction when I got lost my first day. In one of those little coincidences that happen now and then, my cousin’s landlady at 730 Allerton was Mrs. Mary Tesolin, the mother of Carmen Tesolin, my future wife, though I didn’t actually meet her until 1963. In 1955, my cousin Ralph Junior Ratliff and family lived in the old carriage house on property at 726-730 Allerton Street. It sat next to an old farmhouse also owned by Mary “Sironi” Tesolin, Carmen’s mother.
Both of Ralph Ratliff’s sons worked shifts for the ambulance service as well as working other jobs, so Ralph Jr. and Harold were always descending the stairs to raid the refrigerator. One of Harold’s sons, Kenny, also lived there. Ralph and Irene Ratliff assumed the responsibility of caring for Kenneth Ratliff after Harold’s divorce from his first wife Virginia. They continued to care for Kenny until he joined the Navy in 1965.
Kenny and I slept in the glassed in front porch of the house. I remember it being quite cold, especially since my aunt Irene insisted on an open window, even in mid winter. Something about the health benefits of fresh air. It was also noisy. The police radio was always on in the living room for some reason. I didn’t understand why the radio wasn’t upstairs with the ambulance guys. The house was also very close to Bayshore Highway, and there was a stop light at Middlefield and Bayshore. Trucks that stopped at the light had to rev up their engines to get moving again. On the other side were the trains. The tracks were, a few blocks away, but the trains ran all night. I don’t think I got a lotta sleep.
In the late 1950s Harold and Ralph Junior Ratliff purchased the Flying “A” service station at the corner of Middlefield and Bayshore. Ralph Sr. helped with the financing.
In 1959 Ralph Junior Ratliff left the business and eventually moved his family to Oregon leaving Harold Ratliff the sole owner of the business.
In the late 1950s the County of San Mateo decided it needed the block that housed both Peninsula Ambulance Service and Ratliff’s Flying “A” so the Ambulance Business moved to a new location, and built a new building at 1260 Marshall St., and Harold Ratliff rejoined the Ambulance Company. The building on Marshall is still there and currently occupied by Aloha Flowers (2005).
Before the Kaiser Medical Center was completed in 1968 we used to set off 4th of July fireworks in front of the Ambulance Service. Kaiser was virtually built in our front yard. During the 1960s while Kaiser was being built my entire family worked at 1260 Marshall. My uncle ran the businesses, my cousins drove ambulances, and my mother ran the medical supply for a while. My aunt ran Sequoia Physicians & Surgeons Exchange in the same building. I even worked there when I was in high school in 1963.
After I was discharged from the U.S. Navy in 1967 I used the skills that I learned as a hospital corpsman to moonlight for various ambulance services while I was attending San Francisco State University. The skills required by civilian ambulance employees were nearly identical to those skills used by a field medic (corpsman) with the U.S. Marines. I worked in the operating room at the old Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. That made it possible for me to moonlight some nights and weekends for Bob’s Ambulance Service in Oakland while still on active duty.
Often, history is what is going on in the background of a photograph so the following photographs not only show some vintage Peninsula Ambulances from the 1940s and 50s, but also shows a large facility that belonged to the Mobil Oil Company. The Mobil facility was directly across Middlefield from both Peninsula Ambulance and the Flying “A” station. You can also see a tower appears close but was actually several blocks away at Frank’s Tannery. Just across the Highway from the Flying “A” was the Redwood City Rodeo Grounds. That’s about where the Department of Motor Vehicles is located now.
In 1961 Ralph Ratliff was voted president of the California Ambulance Association. On September 6th of that same year the San Mateo Times reported that my uncle and a California Highway Patrol Officer named Fred Hagen climbed down a 400-foot cliff on Tunitas Road to rescue a 16-year-old boy who was thrown from a Jeep when it hit a tree. My uncle was 57 years old at the time and had several younger drivers on his payroll, but he enjoyed the work so much that he was still taking regular turns behind the wheel of the ambulance.
People forget that before Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and specialized rescue vehicles, ambulance services did it all. Peninsula Ambulance Service covered most of San Mateo County, from delivering a baby in La Honda to rescuing a teenager coastside. I remember hearing my uncle’s voice on the ambulance radio informing the hospital that he was coming in from Half Moon Bay with one up and two down. That meant that he had two patients on gurneys and one on a hammock like device used only in extreme emergencies.
In most cases there were no freeways, so when an ambulance was coming in from coastside, it was traveling narrow twisting roads often in the fog. Some of those roads are still no fun to drive today.
The old Five Points Hotel at 2015 El Camino Real was the location of frequent calls. There was always trouble and ambulance calls to that location were always seen as dangerous. My uncle used to always complain about employees being injured on calls to the hotel. Some of the legendary danger may have been exaggerated, but the Redwood City Police closed down the hotel in the early 1950s.
My uncle was credited with saving the life of a man whose throat had been cut in a knife fight in the “five points area” on January 17, 1955. Somehow he managed keep the man from bleeding to death from a severed jugular vein on the way to the hospital, this according to the San Mateo Times.
It wasn’t always people who were rescued. When a 16 year old boy hit a dog with his motor scooter in 1957, he not only delivered the boy with a broken leg to the hospital, but he also delivered the dog to a vet.
That same year Uncle Ralph had to descend on a sling from a crane into a concrete vat to rescue a worker with a fractured spine. The worker was a welder working on a Bayshore Freeway overpass when he leaned too far into the vat.
On May 17, 1962 Ralph Ratliff represented Redwood City at the annual hearing conducted by the California State Chamber of Commerce. The Issues were the completion of the Five Points Overpass, the Junipero Serra Freeway (280), the Skyline Freeway and the Bayfront Freeway (101). There was also resolution offered by the City of Half Moon Bay seeking to continue the so-called San Bruno Freeway (380) to Half Moon Bay.
I’m not sure where my uncle stood on the last issue. This was just a couple of years after the City of Pacifica was formed to keep from being annexed by San Bruno, and a couple of years before Pacifica tried to annex all of the communities of the coastside down to Princeton By the Sea. Development was popular then. There was even a plan to make Montara into another Linda Mar.
Unfortunately, his election to the new post came shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer. His death in March 1963 was front-page news in the Times Tribune on March 18, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, whose Peninsula Ambulance Service has provided Redwood City’s emergency transportation for 19 years died Saturday afternoon after a long battle with cancer. Mr. Ratliff, 59, came here in 1939 to establish a garage and towing service at the corner of Main Street and Old Bayshore.
In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, told Mr. Ratliff that the community should be provided with some kind of ambulance service. Mr. Ratliff decided to go into the business. He began with one vehicle and today, with headquarters at 1260 Marshall St., has five.
A native of Springfield [actually Tallula], Ill., Mr. Ratliff came to Redwood City from San Francisco. He has been identified with many civic activities throughout the years, notably as the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Highway and Traffic Committee. It was for this group that he campaigned for the widening of Jefferson Ave. and Woodside Rd., the extension of Edgewood Rd. to Half Moon Bay, and many of the local provisions of the local in the proposed city-county highway bond issue.
Mr. Ratliff also was a member of the Redwood City Exchange club, Redwood City Elks lodge, Modern Woodmen of the World and United Commercial Travelers. He was a charter member and past president of the California Ambulance Association, and was awarded a 20-year pin as a first aide instructor by the Red Cross.
Mr. Ratliff’s family will continue to run the ambulance firm.
Survivors include his widow, Irene, at the family home, 1007 Katherine St.; Sons Ralph J., Menlo Park and Harold K., Redwood City; a daughter; Mrs. Virginia Collins, Los Altos and a son by a previous marriage, Ralph H. Ratliff Jr. of Los Angeles. A Sister, Mrs. Mardel Womer [My mother’s married name with her second husband] resides in Redwood City. There are 15 grandchildren.
Private Funeral Services were held at Lyng & Tinney Funeral Home, 717 Jefferson Ave. Mr. Ratliff willed his body to Stanford Medical School for research.
The family prefers contributions to the American Cancer Society, 1517 South B St., San Mateo.
And in another article on March 25, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, A Valuable Citizen
It was no longer news to his friends when it appeared in Monday’s paper that Ralph H. Ratliff had succumbed. Mr. Ratliff had been stricken with cancer more than a year ago, and hope for survival disappeared long ago but Mr. Ratliff refused to give up.
He knew that there were many jobs to be done, and he was going to do his best to get some results while he was still able to do so.
Mr. Ratliff was one of the developers of an excellent ambulance for Peninsulans. He wasn’t merely satisfied to transport to the hospital; he became an expert in first aide and his careful handling of patients was in many cases the difference between life and death.
Mr. Ratliff didn’t confine himself to matter involving his own profession. He was civic minded, and in this too he put in his best effort. Hi thorough study of Redwood City’s street and traffic problems, made at the request of the Chamber of Commerce, has been used as a model by both city and county governments in planning for the future.
Much of his best work came after he knew that he would never be able to shake the cancer that was spreading through his body.
This effort and enthusiasm ….the will to keep working for the public’s benefit even while knowing that he would reap none of the benefits…made Ralph H. Ratliff one of Redwood City’s most valuable citizens.
The entire community shares with his family this deep loss.
The family tried to continue the business together, but as often happens in these situations, there was disagreement about how the business should be run, so Harold Ratliff established a competing service, California Ambulance.
Harold Ratliff in the California Ambulance Office about 1970
California Ambulance Service was moderately successful but the move by San Mateo County to station emergency medical responders to fire stations left only non-emergency transport work to private ambulance companies. Eventually, both Peninsula Ambulance Service and California Ambulance Service merged with Mercy Ambulance Service in Daly City to form Mercy-Peninsula Ambulance.
Irene Ratliff retired and moved to Oregon to be close to her children. Harold worked at Raychem in Menlo Park until his death on May 06, 1985. He died of a heart attack behind the wheel of his car on El Camino Real.
Times Tribune May 08, 1985
Harold Ratliff, 59, Known as “Ratliff the Magician” to scores of Peninsula children and church groups, and a resident of Redwood City for over 40 years, died Monday in Mills Memorial Hospital after a sudden illness. He was a native of San Francisco.
He was a Navy veteran of World War II and served in the Pacific. In recent years he worked for Raychem in Menlo Park.
As a magician he performed for churches, children’s parties and many organizations.
Survivors include his wife Carol, his wife of 37 years; his sons, Kenneth of San Jose and Donald and Robert of Oregon; daughters Donna Knerr of Texas, Sandra Ebaugh of Mountain View and Barbara Ferriera of Florida; brothers Ralph J. of Oregon and Ralph H. of Los Angeles; a sister, Virginia Collins of Pasadena; his mother, Irene Ratliff of Oregon.
Private services have been held with internment in Golden Gate National Cemetery at San Bruno under direction of the Redwood Chapel, Redwood City. The family suggests memorial gifts to the American Heart Association.
© Copyright 1996-2010 SFgenealogy. All rights reserved.
This would appear to be one of the earlier ambulances, maybe late in the 1940s. That’s the Mobil Oil complex that used to be at the corner Middlefield and Bayshore Highway in the background.
www.sfgenealogy.com/sanmateo/history/ambulance/smambulanc...
As remembered by
Michael Ratliff Lutz
Introduction:
When I began researching my family’s history in Redwood City, California in the year 2004 I was certain that I would be able to find a lot of information about my uncle, Ralph H. Ratliff since his death in March of 1963 was front-page news in The Redwood City Tribune. To my surprise, he was nearly a forgotten man. The local historical societies only had a couple of old newspaper clippings. I only had the clippings and photos that my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff (Lutz) (Womer), had saved in her scrapbook over the years to work with. With the help of a few relatives I have been able to reconstruct the story of Ralph Ratliff and his Peninsula Ambulance Service.
Ratliff Enterprises as described in a 1961 Redwood City Tribune article:
Twelve women in three shifts work around the clock with their fingers virtually on the pulse of a vast segment of professional and business life. These women answer a monthly average of 38,000 telephone calls.
They are employees of Ratliff Enterprises, Inc a family owner corporation occupying its own two-story building at 1260 Marshall Street. Ratliff Enterprises operates the Redwood City Telephone Answering Service, which embraces the Sequoia District Physicians Exchange. It also operates the Peninsula Ambulance Service and the Peninsula Hospital Rental Service. Its ambulances respond to 500 calls monthly. The County of San Mateo subsidizes peninsula Ambulance Service.
Its rental service rents out anything needed for the care of patients in the home…such things as oxygen, refrigerated tents, wheel chairs, therapy lamps, traction equipment and beds.
The officers of the corporation are Ralph H. Ratliff, president: his wife Irene I. Ratliff: vice president their two sons and a daughter, K. Harold Ratliff and Ralph J. Ratliff, and Mrs. Virginia Collins, directors. Mrs. Ratliff manages the answering service with Mrs. Collins as the assistant manager. Harold is the manager and bookkeeper of the ambulance and rental divisions.
Mateo County uses a subsidy system with Peninsula Ambulance Service so they could discontinue their own emergency ambulance service. If the company couldn’t collect from individuals, the county would reimburse them $20 per call for all service ordered through police systems. Most calls came through the Sheriffs Office.
In 1960 Peninsula Ambulance received a subsidy of $18,000, a considerable savings compared to what it would have cost to operate their own system. Ambulance employees were taught advanced Red Cross first aide, basic obstetrics and oxygen therapy.
As to obstetrics, Ralph Ratliff personally delivered 10 babies while working shifts with his ambulance crews, three of these births occurred in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. It just happened that 10 mothers waited until the very last minute. Unlike in the storybooks, none of the babies were named after him.
The ambulance fees are $25 per call plus supplies used at the accident scene like splints and oxygen, and $12.50 if a second patient on a stretcher was involved. A third person with minor injuries could ride with the driver for free.
I was able to find reports of two of those baby deliveries in the San Mateo Times archives, one in La Honda on July 14, 1949, and another in the back of the ambulance on August 21 1957. It is true that neither baby was named Ralph after my uncle, but then again, they were both girls.
Oops, I nearly missed the boy he delivered on July 2, 1954. He wasn’t named Ralph either.
Recent generations probably don’t realize that emergency medical service used to be provided by private ambulance companies. Until the late 1970s when EMTs were stationed in firehouses, private ambulance services like Peninsula Ambulance Service and Harold Ratliff’s California Ambulance Service would respond to medical emergencies. Ambulance personnel received advanced first aide training from the American Red Cross. In fact, Ralph Ratliff was a first aide instructor for the Red Cross for several years. The classes were taught at the Sequoia Chapter of the American Red Cross, 3540 Middlefield Road in Menlo Park. There were six, two-hour sessions taught in the evening, ending in a Red Cross certificate for those who passed the course.
I’m probably not the best person to tell the story of Peninsula Ambulance since my contact with this part of my family was rather inconsistent over the years. My mother was half owner of Home Creek Resort at Huntington lake in Fresno County so except for two years in 1951 and 1952 when we wintered over with Ralph Ratliff’s family in Redwood City, my contact was limited to a couple of weeks on vacation every year. In my senior high school year, 1962-63 we moved to Redwood City, but that was just a few months before my uncle died. There was a time when you couldn’t go anywhere in Redwood City without bumping into a member of the Ratliff family, but now it seems I’m the only one left. Fortunately, my mother saved numerous newspaper articles and photographs that should be helpful.
Ralph H. Ratliff was born in Tallula, Illinois on November 05, 1903 to George O. and Carrie Ratliff of Jacksonville, Illinois. The family, including his older brother Frank Jerry Ratliff, and younger sister and my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff later moved to Los Angeles then to San Francisco in the 1920s. My grandfather, George O. Ratliff was in the real estate business but Ralph found working on cars more to his liking, so for several years he worked as an auto mechanic in San Francisco.
Prior to leaving Los Angeles, Ralph had a brief marriage to Mildred Hensley, and a son Ralph H. Ratliff Jr., born October 14, 1922. Ralph Jr. moved to San Francisco with the rest of the family and was cared for by my mother and grandmother until Ralph married Irene I. Haseltine of Redwood City in Palo Alto, California on May 8, 1925. Their first son, Kenneth “Harold” Ratliff was born November 04, 1925. They had two additional children, Ralph Junior Ratliff, born January 25, 1927 and Virginia Lois Ratliff, born May 21, 1928.
Irene Haseltine was a Redwood City girl, her emigrated to Redwood City from Wisconsin in the early 1900s. Ralph and Irene Ratliff continued to live in San Francisco until 1939 when, with financial assistance from his father George Ratliff, he opened the Peninsula Garage in Redwood City.
The first location of the Peninsula Garage was near Bayshore Highway, near Main and Bradford today. This section of Bayshore is now Veteran’s Blvd. The location near the highway made it easier for both the towing business and the ambulance business to respond quickly. When they moved to 432 Middlefield Rd. they were about the same distance from the highway as they were at Main and Bradford. There were no freeways then. The highways all had stoplights at major intersections. Bayshore Highway had only two lanes in each direction with no center divider. There were very few buildings along old Bayshore but there were a lot of billboards
Towing was a large part of the Peninsula Garage business. It was the towing business that got Ralph Ratliff started in the ambulance business. Ralph’s tow trucks were arriving at auto accident scenes long before the ambulance arrived. In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, asked my uncle to provide the community with some kind of ambulance service. Ralph purchased a used ambulance from a taxicab company, took first aide classes, and went into business. It’s not clear why a taxi company had an ambulance.
At first the Peninsula Garage and Peninsula Ambulance coexisted at the same address at 450 Main St., Redwood City. They also shared the same phone number for a while which probably caused some confusion, but there is no record of a tow truck responding to an ambulance call.
During the early 1940s the Ratliff family lived on Oxford Street in Redwood City. Oxford Street was pretty much out in the country then. There were very few other houses around. Later they moved to a large white house at 432 Middlefield Rd. near the corner of old Bayshore Highway. That location is now a county parking lot. That house also served as the base for the ambulance service.
This article about my cousin Harold Ratliff’s wedding reception pretty much sums up the Ratliff family in Redwood City during World War 2. My mother was living with the Ratliff’s on Oxford Street then. My father was away in the army and I was just born a month before or so before the article was written so it was easier for her to live with relatives. I was at this reception but don’t remember much.
Ironically, I was born in San Francisco. My family was from San Francisco but by 1944 my grand parents had moved to Burlingame and my mother was living in Redwood City. They all decided to go to a fireworks display at Kezar stadium in 1944, and that’s when and where I was born.
Redwood City Tribune, August 1944:
A large wedding party and reception was held in honor of newly wedded Mr. and Mrs. Harold Kenneth Ratliff, the former Miss Virginia Alberta French of San Francisco, at the home of the groom’s grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Alva Haseltine of 479 Sequoia Ave. last week.
Because of Harold’s short leave from the navy, in which he is a seaman second class, the couple was married in Reno on Aug. 23. They met several years ago when Virginia visited her aunt, Mrs. Tom Kelly of Redwood City.
For her wedding the bride chose the navy colors of navy blue and white. She wore a navy blue suit with white accessories and a gardenia corsage.
Harold is the son of Mr. and Mrs. R.H. Ratliff of 1474 Oxford St. He is the brother of Ralph and Virginia Ratliff who attend Sequoia High School and Ralph Harold Ratliff Jr. who is now in the U.S. Army at Camp Haan. Harold also attended Sequoia High School.
At the reception the table was decorated in blue and white centered with a tiered wedding cake topped with a miniature sailor and his bride. Many gifts were received by the newlyweds.
Attending the reception were Mr. and Mrs. George Ratliff, grandparents of the groom, Mrs. Nina Mardel Lutz, aunt, and son Michael Lutz; Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Keyser, aunt and uncle, and cousins, Bonnie, Phillip and Jimmie Keyser; Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Haseltine, aunt and uncle, and Neal and Dale Haseltine; Mrs. Jasper Haseltine, aunt, and Joanne and Freddie Haseltine, and Sgt. and Mrs. Herbert England, cousins, and daughter, Sharon Lee.
Also attending were Sgt. and Mrs. John Whittington, Mr. and Mrs. Tony Alvis and sons, Mr. Norman Peterson and Kenneth Peterson, USN.
Unable to attend were Mr. Jasper Haseltine, uncle, who is now overseas with the merchant marine, Sgt. Eddie Thoemke of the U.S. Army, and Mrs. Thoemke, uncle and aunt; and Sgt. Richard Lutz, uncle, who is currently stationed in Roswell, New Mexico.
This is my cousin Virginia (Ginny) Ratliff behind their home at 1474 Oxford St in Redwood City about in the late 1940s. That area behind her would be covered with houses by 1950.
Unfortunately, Harold Ratliff’s Marriage to Virginia French only lasted a couple of years. He later married Carol Sufczynski Dierks of Redwood City on March 26,1949.
Around 1948 the Ratliff family and the business moved to a new location at 432 Middlefield Road, now a parking lot for the San Mateo County Offices. The garage was sold and they purchased an answering service, Sequoia District Physicians Exchange.
Both the businesses and the family occupied the same large house. The answering service occupied what was a large living room. Fortunately the house must have had two living rooms, because there was another room of equal size with a connecting door. The upstairs served as quarters for the ambulance crews.
There was enough room in the house to accommodate my mother and me the winters of 1951 and 1952 during the off-season for my mother’s business, Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake, CA. From November to March we lived in Redwood City. I attended Monroe School, and mom worked shifts at the answering service.
On October 08, 1949 my uncle Ralph was nearly killed in a three-car pile up on old Pacheco Pass. He was on his way to Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake in Fresno County. The resort was co-owned by my mother, and uncle Frank “Jerry” Ratliff. Every fall the family gathered at the resort during deer season. I can remember my uncle in what was nearly a full body cast lying in a hospital bed in the living room of that house on Middlefield.
Getting to Monroe School was an easy walk then because Bradford connected Middlefield Rd. and Allerton St. Ralph Junior Ratliff and his family lived at 730 Allerton diagonally across from Monroe School so they were available to point me in the right direction when I got lost my first day. In one of those little coincidences that happen now and then, my cousin’s landlady at 730 Allerton was Mrs. Mary Tesolin, the mother of Carmen Tesolin, my future wife, though I didn’t actually meet her until 1963. In 1955, my cousin Ralph Junior Ratliff and family lived in the old carriage house on property at 726-730 Allerton Street. It sat next to an old farmhouse also owned by Mary “Sironi” Tesolin, Carmen’s mother.
Both of Ralph Ratliff’s sons worked shifts for the ambulance service as well as working other jobs, so Ralph Jr. and Harold were always descending the stairs to raid the refrigerator. One of Harold’s sons, Kenny, also lived there. Ralph and Irene Ratliff assumed the responsibility of caring for Kenneth Ratliff after Harold’s divorce from his first wife Virginia. They continued to care for Kenny until he joined the Navy in 1965.
Kenny and I slept in the glassed in front porch of the house. I remember it being quite cold, especially since my aunt Irene insisted on an open window, even in mid winter. Something about the health benefits of fresh air. It was also noisy. The police radio was always on in the living room for some reason. I didn’t understand why the radio wasn’t upstairs with the ambulance guys. The house was also very close to Bayshore Highway, and there was a stop light at Middlefield and Bayshore. Trucks that stopped at the light had to rev up their engines to get moving again. On the other side were the trains. The tracks were, a few blocks away, but the trains ran all night. I don’t think I got a lotta sleep.
In the late 1950s Harold and Ralph Junior Ratliff purchased the Flying “A” service station at the corner of Middlefield and Bayshore. Ralph Sr. helped with the financing.
In 1959 Ralph Junior Ratliff left the business and eventually moved his family to Oregon leaving Harold Ratliff the sole owner of the business.
In the late 1950s the County of San Mateo decided it needed the block that housed both Peninsula Ambulance Service and Ratliff’s Flying “A” so the Ambulance Business moved to a new location, and built a new building at 1260 Marshall St., and Harold Ratliff rejoined the Ambulance Company. The building on Marshall is still there and currently occupied by Aloha Flowers (2005).
Before the Kaiser Medical Center was completed in 1968 we used to set off 4th of July fireworks in front of the Ambulance Service. Kaiser was virtually built in our front yard. During the 1960s while Kaiser was being built my entire family worked at 1260 Marshall. My uncle ran the businesses, my cousins drove ambulances, and my mother ran the medical supply for a while. My aunt ran Sequoia Physicians & Surgeons Exchange in the same building. I even worked there when I was in high school in 1963.
After I was discharged from the U.S. Navy in 1967 I used the skills that I learned as a hospital corpsman to moonlight for various ambulance services while I was attending San Francisco State University. The skills required by civilian ambulance employees were nearly identical to those skills used by a field medic (corpsman) with the U.S. Marines. I worked in the operating room at the old Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. That made it possible for me to moonlight some nights and weekends for Bob’s Ambulance Service in Oakland while still on active duty.
Often, history is what is going on in the background of a photograph so the following photographs not only show some vintage Peninsula Ambulances from the 1940s and 50s, but also shows a large facility that belonged to the Mobil Oil Company. The Mobil facility was directly across Middlefield from both Peninsula Ambulance and the Flying “A” station. You can also see a tower appears close but was actually several blocks away at Frank’s Tannery. Just across the Highway from the Flying “A” was the Redwood City Rodeo Grounds. That’s about where the Department of Motor Vehicles is located now.
In 1961 Ralph Ratliff was voted president of the California Ambulance Association. On September 6th of that same year the San Mateo Times reported that my uncle and a California Highway Patrol Officer named Fred Hagen climbed down a 400-foot cliff on Tunitas Road to rescue a 16-year-old boy who was thrown from a Jeep when it hit a tree. My uncle was 57 years old at the time and had several younger drivers on his payroll, but he enjoyed the work so much that he was still taking regular turns behind the wheel of the ambulance.
People forget that before Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and specialized rescue vehicles, ambulance services did it all. Peninsula Ambulance Service covered most of San Mateo County, from delivering a baby in La Honda to rescuing a teenager coastside. I remember hearing my uncle’s voice on the ambulance radio informing the hospital that he was coming in from Half Moon Bay with one up and two down. That meant that he had two patients on gurneys and one on a hammock like device used only in extreme emergencies.
In most cases there were no freeways, so when an ambulance was coming in from coastside, it was traveling narrow twisting roads often in the fog. Some of those roads are still no fun to drive today.
The old Five Points Hotel at 2015 El Camino Real was the location of frequent calls. There was always trouble and ambulance calls to that location were always seen as dangerous. My uncle used to always complain about employees being injured on calls to the hotel. Some of the legendary danger may have been exaggerated, but the Redwood City Police closed down the hotel in the early 1950s.
My uncle was credited with saving the life of a man whose throat had been cut in a knife fight in the “five points area” on January 17, 1955. Somehow he managed keep the man from bleeding to death from a severed jugular vein on the way to the hospital, this according to the San Mateo Times.
It wasn’t always people who were rescued. When a 16 year old boy hit a dog with his motor scooter in 1957, he not only delivered the boy with a broken leg to the hospital, but he also delivered the dog to a vet.
That same year Uncle Ralph had to descend on a sling from a crane into a concrete vat to rescue a worker with a fractured spine. The worker was a welder working on a Bayshore Freeway overpass when he leaned too far into the vat.
On May 17, 1962 Ralph Ratliff represented Redwood City at the annual hearing conducted by the California State Chamber of Commerce. The Issues were the completion of the Five Points Overpass, the Junipero Serra Freeway (280), the Skyline Freeway and the Bayfront Freeway (101). There was also resolution offered by the City of Half Moon Bay seeking to continue the so-called San Bruno Freeway (380) to Half Moon Bay.
I’m not sure where my uncle stood on the last issue. This was just a couple of years after the City of Pacifica was formed to keep from being annexed by San Bruno, and a couple of years before Pacifica tried to annex all of the communities of the coastside down to Princeton By the Sea. Development was popular then. There was even a plan to make Montara into another Linda Mar.
Unfortunately, his election to the new post came shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer. His death in March 1963 was front-page news in the Times Tribune on March 18, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, whose Peninsula Ambulance Service has provided Redwood City’s emergency transportation for 19 years died Saturday afternoon after a long battle with cancer. Mr. Ratliff, 59, came here in 1939 to establish a garage and towing service at the corner of Main Street and Old Bayshore.
In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, told Mr. Ratliff that the community should be provided with some kind of ambulance service. Mr. Ratliff decided to go into the business. He began with one vehicle and today, with headquarters at 1260 Marshall St., has five.
A native of Springfield [actually Tallula], Ill., Mr. Ratliff came to Redwood City from San Francisco. He has been identified with many civic activities throughout the years, notably as the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Highway and Traffic Committee. It was for this group that he campaigned for the widening of Jefferson Ave. and Woodside Rd., the extension of Edgewood Rd. to Half Moon Bay, and many of the local provisions of the local in the proposed city-county highway bond issue.
Mr. Ratliff also was a member of the Redwood City Exchange club, Redwood City Elks lodge, Modern Woodmen of the World and United Commercial Travelers. He was a charter member and past president of the California Ambulance Association, and was awarded a 20-year pin as a first aide instructor by the Red Cross.
Mr. Ratliff’s family will continue to run the ambulance firm.
Survivors include his widow, Irene, at the family home, 1007 Katherine St.; Sons Ralph J., Menlo Park and Harold K., Redwood City; a daughter; Mrs. Virginia Collins, Los Altos and a son by a previous marriage, Ralph H. Ratliff Jr. of Los Angeles. A Sister, Mrs. Mardel Womer [My mother’s married name with her second husband] resides in Redwood City. There are 15 grandchildren.
Private Funeral Services were held at Lyng & Tinney Funeral Home, 717 Jefferson Ave. Mr. Ratliff willed his body to Stanford Medical School for research.
The family prefers contributions to the American Cancer Society, 1517 South B St., San Mateo.
And in another article on March 25, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, A Valuable Citizen
It was no longer news to his friends when it appeared in Monday’s paper that Ralph H. Ratliff had succumbed. Mr. Ratliff had been stricken with cancer more than a year ago, and hope for survival disappeared long ago but Mr. Ratliff refused to give up.
He knew that there were many jobs to be done, and he was going to do his best to get some results while he was still able to do so.
Mr. Ratliff was one of the developers of an excellent ambulance for Peninsulans. He wasn’t merely satisfied to transport to the hospital; he became an expert in first aide and his careful handling of patients was in many cases the difference between life and death.
Mr. Ratliff didn’t confine himself to matter involving his own profession. He was civic minded, and in this too he put in his best effort. Hi thorough study of Redwood City’s street and traffic problems, made at the request of the Chamber of Commerce, has been used as a model by both city and county governments in planning for the future.
Much of his best work came after he knew that he would never be able to shake the cancer that was spreading through his body.
This effort and enthusiasm ….the will to keep working for the public’s benefit even while knowing that he would reap none of the benefits…made Ralph H. Ratliff one of Redwood City’s most valuable citizens.
The entire community shares with his family this deep loss.
The family tried to continue the business together, but as often happens in these situations, there was disagreement about how the business should be run, so Harold Ratliff established a competing service, California Ambulance.
Harold Ratliff in the California Ambulance Office about 1970
California Ambulance Service was moderately successful but the move by San Mateo County to station emergency medical responders to fire stations left only non-emergency transport work to private ambulance companies. Eventually, both Peninsula Ambulance Service and California Ambulance Service merged with Mercy Ambulance Service in Daly City to form Mercy-Peninsula Ambulance.
Irene Ratliff retired and moved to Oregon to be close to her children. Harold worked at Raychem in Menlo Park until his death on May 06, 1985. He died of a heart attack behind the wheel of his car on El Camino Real.
Times Tribune May 08, 1985
Harold Ratliff, 59, Known as “Ratliff the Magician” to scores of Peninsula children and church groups, and a resident of Redwood City for over 40 years, died Monday in Mills Memorial Hospital after a sudden illness. He was a native of San Francisco.
He was a Navy veteran of World War II and served in the Pacific. In recent years he worked for Raychem in Menlo Park.
As a magician he performed for churches, children’s parties and many organizations.
Survivors include his wife Carol, his wife of 37 years; his sons, Kenneth of San Jose and Donald and Robert of Oregon; daughters Donna Knerr of Texas, Sandra Ebaugh of Mountain View and Barbara Ferriera of Florida; brothers Ralph J. of Oregon and Ralph H. of Los Angeles; a sister, Virginia Collins of Pasadena; his mother, Irene Ratliff of Oregon.
Private services have been held with internment in Golden Gate National Cemetery at San Bruno under direction of the Redwood Chapel, Redwood City. The family suggests memorial gifts to the American Heart Association.
© Copyright 1996-2010 SFgenealogy. All rights reserved.
12.05.2016 Manchester UK: Police and Forensic officers at the scene in Moss Lane East , Moss Side where a male was hit by and car and other males got out of another car and stabbed the victim in broad day light. Fireman from a hear by fire station went to the aid of the victim. a spokesman said Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service confirmed staff from the station performed CPR and gave the victim ‘oxygen therapy’ before handing him over to paramedics when they arrived
I took these photos inside the infectious ward of the Karol Jonschers Children's Hospital, Poznań. It was a time when epidemic armageddon caused by RSV and the next wave of covid was going through pediatric wards. All isolation rooms were then occupied by infected children under the care of a parent. In the corridor there are rows of cardboard boxes with overalls, spare beds. Some kids were treated with oxygen. Less than 2-year-old kid subjected to high-flow oxygen therapy. Only there were fewer ventilators here than in adults. But they also happened.
The photos would not have been made without help and kindness from the crew of Department VIII. Special thanks are due to prof. dr hab. n. med. Magdalena Figlerowicz and Karolina Samarzewska, MA, who agreed to the presence of a annoying man with a camera in their clinic.
Autmn/winter 22/23. Poznań, PL.
MODEL RELEASED. Oxygen therapy. Close-up of a young woman wearing an oxygen mask. Oxygen therapy supplies oxygen-enriched air to patients who have hypoxia (inadequate oxygen in the body tissues). It is used to treat lung and breathing disorders.
MID-CITY - The Los Angeles Fire Department rescued three pet cats from a smoke-charged Mid-City apartment Wednesday evening, as they battled the flames of a kitchen fire, but only one of the pets was able to be successfully resuscitated by responders.
The first of several 9-1-1 calls were received at 5:19 PM on October 19, 2022, summoning LAFD Firefighters to the 5100 block of West Pickford Avenue in the Mid-City area of Los Angeles.
Firefighters arrived quickly to find smoke showing from one downstairs unit of an eight unit two-story apartment building. Though witnesses described the apartment's two occupants as having recently departed, LAFD personnel commenced a well-coordinated interior attack on the flames with a simultaneous search of the premises, to assure no person or pet was in peril.
Despite heat, thick smoke and excessive personal storage within the unit, the firefighter search team quickly determined there were no human occupants, but discovered three seemingly lifeless cats, which were swiftly moved outdoors to fresh air where #lifesaving efforts were commenced.
Though two of the cats were sadly determined to be beyond medical help, the third was confirmed to have a pulse and be breathing, and was provided oxygen by LAFD responders. Following 10 minutes of continuous oxygen therapy and hands-on care, the surviving cat stood up and interacted with firefighters.
Twenty-nine LAFD Firefighters under the command of Battalion Chief Paul Pham, took less than eight minutes to access, confine and fully extinguish flames within the kitchen area of the apartment. No civilian or responder injuries were reported.
Though the fire appeared to have originated near a sizeable amount of electrical equipment kept within the kitchen, the specific cause of the fire is undetermined.
Monetary loss from the fire is still being tabulated. The 4,585 square-foot apartment building, constructed in 1930, did not feature optional fire sprinklers.
The surviving cat was entrusted to the temporary care of a neighbor, until the pet owner's return.
Photo Use Permitted via Creative Commons - Credit: LAFD
LAFD Incident 101922-1297
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MID-CITY - The Los Angeles Fire Department rescued three pet cats from a smoke-charged Mid-City apartment Wednesday evening, as they battled the flames of a kitchen fire, but only one of the pets was able to be successfully resuscitated by responders.
The first of several 9-1-1 calls were received at 5:19 PM on October 19, 2022, summoning LAFD Firefighters to the 5100 block of West Pickford Avenue in the Mid-City area of Los Angeles.
Firefighters arrived quickly to find smoke showing from one downstairs unit of an eight unit two-story apartment building. Though witnesses described the apartment's two occupants as having recently departed, LAFD personnel commenced a well-coordinated interior attack on the flames with a simultaneous search of the premises, to assure no person or pet was in peril.
Despite heat, thick smoke and excessive personal storage within the unit, the firefighter search team quickly determined there were no human occupants, but discovered three seemingly lifeless cats, which were swiftly moved outdoors to fresh air where #lifesaving efforts were commenced.
Though two of the cats were sadly determined to be beyond medical help, the third was confirmed to have a pulse and be breathing, and was provided oxygen by LAFD responders. Following 10 minutes of continuous oxygen therapy and hands-on care, the surviving cat stood up and interacted with firefighters.
Twenty-nine LAFD Firefighters under the command of Battalion Chief Paul Pham, took less than eight minutes to access, confine and fully extinguish flames within the kitchen area of the apartment. No civilian or responder injuries were reported.
Though the fire appeared to have originated near a sizeable amount of electrical equipment kept within the kitchen, the specific cause of the fire is undetermined.
Monetary loss from the fire is still being tabulated. The 4,585 square-foot apartment building, constructed in 1930, did not feature optional fire sprinklers.
The surviving cat was entrusted to the temporary care of a neighbor, until the pet owner's return.
Photo Use Permitted via Creative Commons - Credit: LAFD
LAFD Incident 101922-1297
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Harold Ratliff in the California Ambulance Office about 1970.
www.sfgenealogy.com/sanmateo/history/ambulance/smambulanc...
As remembered by
Michael Ratliff Lutz
Introduction:
When I began researching my family’s history in Redwood City, California in the year 2004 I was certain that I would be able to find a lot of information about my uncle, Ralph H. Ratliff since his death in March of 1963 was front-page news in The Redwood City Tribune. To my surprise, he was nearly a forgotten man. The local historical societies only had a couple of old newspaper clippings. I only had the clippings and photos that my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff (Lutz) (Womer), had saved in her scrapbook over the years to work with. With the help of a few relatives I have been able to reconstruct the story of Ralph Ratliff and his Peninsula Ambulance Service.
Ratliff Enterprises as described in a 1961 Redwood City Tribune article:
Twelve women in three shifts work around the clock with their fingers virtually on the pulse of a vast segment of professional and business life. These women answer a monthly average of 38,000 telephone calls.
They are employees of Ratliff Enterprises, Inc a family owner corporation occupying its own two-story building at 1260 Marshall Street. Ratliff Enterprises operates the Redwood City Telephone Answering Service, which embraces the Sequoia District Physicians Exchange. It also operates the Peninsula Ambulance Service and the Peninsula Hospital Rental Service. Its ambulances respond to 500 calls monthly. The County of San Mateo subsidizes peninsula Ambulance Service.
Its rental service rents out anything needed for the care of patients in the home…such things as oxygen, refrigerated tents, wheel chairs, therapy lamps, traction equipment and beds.
The officers of the corporation are Ralph H. Ratliff, president: his wife Irene I. Ratliff: vice president their two sons and a daughter, K. Harold Ratliff and Ralph J. Ratliff, and Mrs. Virginia Collins, directors. Mrs. Ratliff manages the answering service with Mrs. Collins as the assistant manager. Harold is the manager and bookkeeper of the ambulance and rental divisions.
Mateo County uses a subsidy system with Peninsula Ambulance Service so they could discontinue their own emergency ambulance service. If the company couldn’t collect from individuals, the county would reimburse them $20 per call for all service ordered through police systems. Most calls came through the Sheriffs Office.
In 1960 Peninsula Ambulance received a subsidy of $18,000, a considerable savings compared to what it would have cost to operate their own system. Ambulance employees were taught advanced Red Cross first aide, basic obstetrics and oxygen therapy.
As to obstetrics, Ralph Ratliff personally delivered 10 babies while working shifts with his ambulance crews, three of these births occurred in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. It just happened that 10 mothers waited until the very last minute. Unlike in the storybooks, none of the babies were named after him.
The ambulance fees are $25 per call plus supplies used at the accident scene like splints and oxygen, and $12.50 if a second patient on a stretcher was involved. A third person with minor injuries could ride with the driver for free.
I was able to find reports of two of those baby deliveries in the San Mateo Times archives, one in La Honda on July 14, 1949, and another in the back of the ambulance on August 21 1957. It is true that neither baby was named Ralph after my uncle, but then again, they were both girls.
Oops, I nearly missed the boy he delivered on July 2, 1954. He wasn’t named Ralph either.
Recent generations probably don’t realize that emergency medical service used to be provided by private ambulance companies. Until the late 1970s when EMTs were stationed in firehouses, private ambulance services like Peninsula Ambulance Service and Harold Ratliff’s California Ambulance Service would respond to medical emergencies. Ambulance personnel received advanced first aide training from the American Red Cross. In fact, Ralph Ratliff was a first aide instructor for the Red Cross for several years. The classes were taught at the Sequoia Chapter of the American Red Cross, 3540 Middlefield Road in Menlo Park. There were six, two-hour sessions taught in the evening, ending in a Red Cross certificate for those who passed the course.
I’m probably not the best person to tell the story of Peninsula Ambulance since my contact with this part of my family was rather inconsistent over the years. My mother was half owner of Home Creek Resort at Huntington lake in Fresno County so except for two years in 1951 and 1952 when we wintered over with Ralph Ratliff’s family in Redwood City, my contact was limited to a couple of weeks on vacation every year. In my senior high school year, 1962-63 we moved to Redwood City, but that was just a few months before my uncle died. There was a time when you couldn’t go anywhere in Redwood City without bumping into a member of the Ratliff family, but now it seems I’m the only one left. Fortunately, my mother saved numerous newspaper articles and photographs that should be helpful.
Ralph H. Ratliff was born in Tallula, Illinois on November 05, 1903 to George O. and Carrie Ratliff of Jacksonville, Illinois. The family, including his older brother Frank Jerry Ratliff, and younger sister and my mother, Nina Mardel Ratliff later moved to Los Angeles then to San Francisco in the 1920s. My grandfather, George O. Ratliff was in the real estate business but Ralph found working on cars more to his liking, so for several years he worked as an auto mechanic in San Francisco.
Prior to leaving Los Angeles, Ralph had a brief marriage to Mildred Hensley, and a son Ralph H. Ratliff Jr., born October 14, 1922. Ralph Jr. moved to San Francisco with the rest of the family and was cared for by my mother and grandmother until Ralph married Irene I. Haseltine of Redwood City in Palo Alto, California on May 8, 1925. Their first son, Kenneth “Harold” Ratliff was born November 04, 1925. They had two additional children, Ralph Junior Ratliff, born January 25, 1927 and Virginia Lois Ratliff, born May 21, 1928.
Irene Haseltine was a Redwood City girl, her emigrated to Redwood City from Wisconsin in the early 1900s. Ralph and Irene Ratliff continued to live in San Francisco until 1939 when, with financial assistance from his father George Ratliff, he opened the Peninsula Garage in Redwood City.
The first location of the Peninsula Garage was near Bayshore Highway, near Main and Bradford today. This section of Bayshore is now Veteran’s Blvd. The location near the highway made it easier for both the towing business and the ambulance business to respond quickly. When they moved to 432 Middlefield Rd. they were about the same distance from the highway as they were at Main and Bradford. There were no freeways then. The highways all had stoplights at major intersections. Bayshore Highway had only two lanes in each direction with no center divider. There were very few buildings along old Bayshore but there were a lot of billboards
Towing was a large part of the Peninsula Garage business. It was the towing business that got Ralph Ratliff started in the ambulance business. Ralph’s tow trucks were arriving at auto accident scenes long before the ambulance arrived. In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, asked my uncle to provide the community with some kind of ambulance service. Ralph purchased a used ambulance from a taxicab company, took first aide classes, and went into business. It’s not clear why a taxi company had an ambulance.
At first the Peninsula Garage and Peninsula Ambulance coexisted at the same address at 450 Main St., Redwood City. They also shared the same phone number for a while which probably caused some confusion, but there is no record of a tow truck responding to an ambulance call.
During the early 1940s the Ratliff family lived on Oxford Street in Redwood City. Oxford Street was pretty much out in the country then. There were very few other houses around. Later they moved to a large white house at 432 Middlefield Rd. near the corner of old Bayshore Highway. That location is now a county parking lot. That house also served as the base for the ambulance service.
This article about my cousin Harold Ratliff’s wedding reception pretty much sums up the Ratliff family in Redwood City during World War 2. My mother was living with the Ratliff’s on Oxford Street then. My father was away in the army and I was just born a month before or so before the article was written so it was easier for her to live with relatives. I was at this reception but don’t remember much.
Ironically, I was born in San Francisco. My family was from San Francisco but by 1944 my grand parents had moved to Burlingame and my mother was living in Redwood City. They all decided to go to a fireworks display at Kezar stadium in 1944, and that’s when and where I was born.
Redwood City Tribune, August 1944:
A large wedding party and reception was held in honor of newly wedded Mr. and Mrs. Harold Kenneth Ratliff, the former Miss Virginia Alberta French of San Francisco, at the home of the groom’s grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Alva Haseltine of 479 Sequoia Ave. last week.
Because of Harold’s short leave from the navy, in which he is a seaman second class, the couple was married in Reno on Aug. 23. They met several years ago when Virginia visited her aunt, Mrs. Tom Kelly of Redwood City.
For her wedding the bride chose the navy colors of navy blue and white. She wore a navy blue suit with white accessories and a gardenia corsage.
Harold is the son of Mr. and Mrs. R.H. Ratliff of 1474 Oxford St. He is the brother of Ralph and Virginia Ratliff who attend Sequoia High School and Ralph Harold Ratliff Jr. who is now in the U.S. Army at Camp Haan. Harold also attended Sequoia High School.
At the reception the table was decorated in blue and white centered with a tiered wedding cake topped with a miniature sailor and his bride. Many gifts were received by the newlyweds.
Attending the reception were Mr. and Mrs. George Ratliff, grandparents of the groom, Mrs. Nina Mardel Lutz, aunt, and son Michael Lutz; Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Keyser, aunt and uncle, and cousins, Bonnie, Phillip and Jimmie Keyser; Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Haseltine, aunt and uncle, and Neal and Dale Haseltine; Mrs. Jasper Haseltine, aunt, and Joanne and Freddie Haseltine, and Sgt. and Mrs. Herbert England, cousins, and daughter, Sharon Lee.
Also attending were Sgt. and Mrs. John Whittington, Mr. and Mrs. Tony Alvis and sons, Mr. Norman Peterson and Kenneth Peterson, USN.
Unable to attend were Mr. Jasper Haseltine, uncle, who is now overseas with the merchant marine, Sgt. Eddie Thoemke of the U.S. Army, and Mrs. Thoemke, uncle and aunt; and Sgt. Richard Lutz, uncle, who is currently stationed in Roswell, New Mexico.
This is my cousin Virginia (Ginny) Ratliff behind their home at 1474 Oxford St in Redwood City about in the late 1940s. That area behind her would be covered with houses by 1950.
Unfortunately, Harold Ratliff’s Marriage to Virginia French only lasted a couple of years. He later married Carol Sufczynski Dierks of Redwood City on March 26,1949.
Around 1948 the Ratliff family and the business moved to a new location at 432 Middlefield Road, now a parking lot for the San Mateo County Offices. The garage was sold and they purchased an answering service, Sequoia District Physicians Exchange.
Both the businesses and the family occupied the same large house. The answering service occupied what was a large living room. Fortunately the house must have had two living rooms, because there was another room of equal size with a connecting door. The upstairs served as quarters for the ambulance crews.
There was enough room in the house to accommodate my mother and me the winters of 1951 and 1952 during the off-season for my mother’s business, Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake, CA. From November to March we lived in Redwood City. I attended Monroe School, and mom worked shifts at the answering service.
On October 08, 1949 my uncle Ralph was nearly killed in a three-car pile up on old Pacheco Pass. He was on his way to Home Creek Resort at Huntington Lake in Fresno County. The resort was co-owned by my mother, and uncle Frank “Jerry” Ratliff. Every fall the family gathered at the resort during deer season. I can remember my uncle in what was nearly a full body cast lying in a hospital bed in the living room of that house on Middlefield.
Getting to Monroe School was an easy walk then because Bradford connected Middlefield Rd. and Allerton St. Ralph Junior Ratliff and his family lived at 730 Allerton diagonally across from Monroe School so they were available to point me in the right direction when I got lost my first day. In one of those little coincidences that happen now and then, my cousin’s landlady at 730 Allerton was Mrs. Mary Tesolin, the mother of Carmen Tesolin, my future wife, though I didn’t actually meet her until 1963. In 1955, my cousin Ralph Junior Ratliff and family lived in the old carriage house on property at 726-730 Allerton Street. It sat next to an old farmhouse also owned by Mary “Sironi” Tesolin, Carmen’s mother.
Both of Ralph Ratliff’s sons worked shifts for the ambulance service as well as working other jobs, so Ralph Jr. and Harold were always descending the stairs to raid the refrigerator. One of Harold’s sons, Kenny, also lived there. Ralph and Irene Ratliff assumed the responsibility of caring for Kenneth Ratliff after Harold’s divorce from his first wife Virginia. They continued to care for Kenny until he joined the Navy in 1965.
Kenny and I slept in the glassed in front porch of the house. I remember it being quite cold, especially since my aunt Irene insisted on an open window, even in mid winter. Something about the health benefits of fresh air. It was also noisy. The police radio was always on in the living room for some reason. I didn’t understand why the radio wasn’t upstairs with the ambulance guys. The house was also very close to Bayshore Highway, and there was a stop light at Middlefield and Bayshore. Trucks that stopped at the light had to rev up their engines to get moving again. On the other side were the trains. The tracks were, a few blocks away, but the trains ran all night. I don’t think I got a lotta sleep.
In the late 1950s Harold and Ralph Junior Ratliff purchased the Flying “A” service station at the corner of Middlefield and Bayshore. Ralph Sr. helped with the financing.
In 1959 Ralph Junior Ratliff left the business and eventually moved his family to Oregon leaving Harold Ratliff the sole owner of the business.
In the late 1950s the County of San Mateo decided it needed the block that housed both Peninsula Ambulance Service and Ratliff’s Flying “A” so the Ambulance Business moved to a new location, and built a new building at 1260 Marshall St., and Harold Ratliff rejoined the Ambulance Company. The building on Marshall is still there and currently occupied by Aloha Flowers (2005).
Before the Kaiser Medical Center was completed in 1968 we used to set off 4th of July fireworks in front of the Ambulance Service. Kaiser was virtually built in our front yard. During the 1960s while Kaiser was being built my entire family worked at 1260 Marshall. My uncle ran the businesses, my cousins drove ambulances, and my mother ran the medical supply for a while. My aunt ran Sequoia Physicians & Surgeons Exchange in the same building. I even worked there when I was in high school in 1963.
After I was discharged from the U.S. Navy in 1967 I used the skills that I learned as a hospital corpsman to moonlight for various ambulance services while I was attending San Francisco State University. The skills required by civilian ambulance employees were nearly identical to those skills used by a field medic (corpsman) with the U.S. Marines. I worked in the operating room at the old Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. That made it possible for me to moonlight some nights and weekends for Bob’s Ambulance Service in Oakland while still on active duty.
Often, history is what is going on in the background of a photograph so the following photographs not only show some vintage Peninsula Ambulances from the 1940s and 50s, but also shows a large facility that belonged to the Mobil Oil Company. The Mobil facility was directly across Middlefield from both Peninsula Ambulance and the Flying “A” station. You can also see a tower appears close but was actually several blocks away at Frank’s Tannery. Just across the Highway from the Flying “A” was the Redwood City Rodeo Grounds. That’s about where the Department of Motor Vehicles is located now.
In 1961 Ralph Ratliff was voted president of the California Ambulance Association. On September 6th of that same year the San Mateo Times reported that my uncle and a California Highway Patrol Officer named Fred Hagen climbed down a 400-foot cliff on Tunitas Road to rescue a 16-year-old boy who was thrown from a Jeep when it hit a tree. My uncle was 57 years old at the time and had several younger drivers on his payroll, but he enjoyed the work so much that he was still taking regular turns behind the wheel of the ambulance.
People forget that before Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and specialized rescue vehicles, ambulance services did it all. Peninsula Ambulance Service covered most of San Mateo County, from delivering a baby in La Honda to rescuing a teenager coastside. I remember hearing my uncle’s voice on the ambulance radio informing the hospital that he was coming in from Half Moon Bay with one up and two down. That meant that he had two patients on gurneys and one on a hammock like device used only in extreme emergencies.
In most cases there were no freeways, so when an ambulance was coming in from coastside, it was traveling narrow twisting roads often in the fog. Some of those roads are still no fun to drive today.
The old Five Points Hotel at 2015 El Camino Real was the location of frequent calls. There was always trouble and ambulance calls to that location were always seen as dangerous. My uncle used to always complain about employees being injured on calls to the hotel. Some of the legendary danger may have been exaggerated, but the Redwood City Police closed down the hotel in the early 1950s.
My uncle was credited with saving the life of a man whose throat had been cut in a knife fight in the “five points area” on January 17, 1955. Somehow he managed keep the man from bleeding to death from a severed jugular vein on the way to the hospital, this according to the San Mateo Times.
It wasn’t always people who were rescued. When a 16 year old boy hit a dog with his motor scooter in 1957, he not only delivered the boy with a broken leg to the hospital, but he also delivered the dog to a vet.
That same year Uncle Ralph had to descend on a sling from a crane into a concrete vat to rescue a worker with a fractured spine. The worker was a welder working on a Bayshore Freeway overpass when he leaned too far into the vat.
On May 17, 1962 Ralph Ratliff represented Redwood City at the annual hearing conducted by the California State Chamber of Commerce. The Issues were the completion of the Five Points Overpass, the Junipero Serra Freeway (280), the Skyline Freeway and the Bayfront Freeway (101). There was also resolution offered by the City of Half Moon Bay seeking to continue the so-called San Bruno Freeway (380) to Half Moon Bay.
I’m not sure where my uncle stood on the last issue. This was just a couple of years after the City of Pacifica was formed to keep from being annexed by San Bruno, and a couple of years before Pacifica tried to annex all of the communities of the coastside down to Princeton By the Sea. Development was popular then. There was even a plan to make Montara into another Linda Mar.
Unfortunately, his election to the new post came shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer. His death in March 1963 was front-page news in the Times Tribune on March 18, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, whose Peninsula Ambulance Service has provided Redwood City’s emergency transportation for 19 years died Saturday afternoon after a long battle with cancer. Mr. Ratliff, 59, came here in 1939 to establish a garage and towing service at the corner of Main Street and Old Bayshore.
In 1944, Mickey Collins, then chief of police, told Mr. Ratliff that the community should be provided with some kind of ambulance service. Mr. Ratliff decided to go into the business. He began with one vehicle and today, with headquarters at 1260 Marshall St., has five.
A native of Springfield [actually Tallula], Ill., Mr. Ratliff came to Redwood City from San Francisco. He has been identified with many civic activities throughout the years, notably as the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Highway and Traffic Committee. It was for this group that he campaigned for the widening of Jefferson Ave. and Woodside Rd., the extension of Edgewood Rd. to Half Moon Bay, and many of the local provisions of the local in the proposed city-county highway bond issue.
Mr. Ratliff also was a member of the Redwood City Exchange club, Redwood City Elks lodge, Modern Woodmen of the World and United Commercial Travelers. He was a charter member and past president of the California Ambulance Association, and was awarded a 20-year pin as a first aide instructor by the Red Cross.
Mr. Ratliff’s family will continue to run the ambulance firm.
Survivors include his widow, Irene, at the family home, 1007 Katherine St.; Sons Ralph J., Menlo Park and Harold K., Redwood City; a daughter; Mrs. Virginia Collins, Los Altos and a son by a previous marriage, Ralph H. Ratliff Jr. of Los Angeles. A Sister, Mrs. Mardel Womer [My mother’s married name with her second husband] resides in Redwood City. There are 15 grandchildren.
Private Funeral Services were held at Lyng & Tinney Funeral Home, 717 Jefferson Ave. Mr. Ratliff willed his body to Stanford Medical School for research.
The family prefers contributions to the American Cancer Society, 1517 South B St., San Mateo.
And in another article on March 25, 1963:
Ralph H. Ratliff, A Valuable Citizen
It was no longer news to his friends when it appeared in Monday’s paper that Ralph H. Ratliff had succumbed. Mr. Ratliff had been stricken with cancer more than a year ago, and hope for survival disappeared long ago but Mr. Ratliff refused to give up.
He knew that there were many jobs to be done, and he was going to do his best to get some results while he was still able to do so.
Mr. Ratliff was one of the developers of an excellent ambulance for Peninsulans. He wasn’t merely satisfied to transport to the hospital; he became an expert in first aide and his careful handling of patients was in many cases the difference between life and death.
Mr. Ratliff didn’t confine himself to matter involving his own profession. He was civic minded, and in this too he put in his best effort. Hi thorough study of Redwood City’s street and traffic problems, made at the request of the Chamber of Commerce, has been used as a model by both city and county governments in planning for the future.
Much of his best work came after he knew that he would never be able to shake the cancer that was spreading through his body.
This effort and enthusiasm ….the will to keep working for the public’s benefit even while knowing that he would reap none of the benefits…made Ralph H. Ratliff one of Redwood City’s most valuable citizens.
The entire community shares with his family this deep loss.
The family tried to continue the business together, but as often happens in these situations, there was disagreement about how the business should be run, so Harold Ratliff established a competing service, California Ambulance.
Harold Ratliff in the California Ambulance Office about 1970
California Ambulance Service was moderately successful but the move by San Mateo County to station emergency medical responders to fire stations left only non-emergency transport work to private ambulance companies. Eventually, both Peninsula Ambulance Service and California Ambulance Service merged with Mercy Ambulance Service in Daly City to form Mercy-Peninsula Ambulance.
Irene Ratliff retired and moved to Oregon to be close to her children. Harold worked at Raychem in Menlo Park until his death on May 06, 1985. He died of a heart attack behind the wheel of his car on El Camino Real.
Times Tribune May 08, 1985
Harold Ratliff, 59, Known as “Ratliff the Magician” to scores of Peninsula children and church groups, and a resident of Redwood City for over 40 years, died Monday in Mills Memorial Hospital after a sudden illness. He was a native of San Francisco.
He was a Navy veteran of World War II and served in the Pacific. In recent years he worked for Raychem in Menlo Park.
As a magician he performed for churches, children’s parties and many organizations.
Survivors include his wife Carol, his wife of 37 years; his sons, Kenneth of San Jose and Donald and Robert of Oregon; daughters Donna Knerr of Texas, Sandra Ebaugh of Mountain View and Barbara Ferriera of Florida; brothers Ralph J. of Oregon and Ralph H. of Los Angeles; a sister, Virginia Collins of Pasadena; his mother, Irene Ratliff of Oregon.
Private services have been held with internment in Golden Gate National Cemetery at San Bruno under direction of the Redwood Chapel, Redwood City. The family suggests memorial gifts to the American Heart Association.
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