Honorguard - Sedgwick County, Kansas Emergency Medical Service (EMS)

Honor Guard

The Sedgwick County EMS Honor Guard was officially established on April 13, 2005 by a group of paramedics who wanted to ensure that the lives of fellow coworkers, paramedics, EMTs, as well as allied agency personnel would be properly memorialized in the event of an untimely death, on or off duty.

In a matter of years, our Honor Guard has grown from what was a fragile idea, to a strongly rooted, highly recognized part of not only our organization, but among the nation’s most respected EMS specific Honor Guards.

Background:

For several years, a few SCEMS paramedics have sought to create an Honor Guard to appropriately represent our service in honoring deceased friends and family. Unfortunately due to budget constraints, their efforts had been unsuccessful, leaving these few medics to attend funerals of fellow public service employees on their own, unofficially representing EMS.

Early in 2005, paramedic Lieutenant Jay Finney, employed at SCEMS for 8 years, passed away. While his death was not in the line of duty, it had a major impact on many medics, as well as fire fighters, police officers and other community service members, not to mention friends and family. His funeral was highly attended as a sign of respect and honor to his memory and dedication. Wichita Fire Department and Sedgwick County Fire Department were represented by their respective Honor Guards as well as the United States Marine Corps; although most of Sedgwick County's paramedics were in attendance of the funeral, we did not have an official Honor Guard. In light of this, several paramedics began to re-evaluate the need and possibility for an EMS Honor Guard. A few months later, what before was only a considerate thought was now a reality.

Purpose:

Since the official organization of the SCEMS Honor Guard, the honor guard wanted to ensure that the spirit of honor, reverence and respect would not be an afterthought of our organization. Since the inception, several members have worked together to describe the purpose of the guard so that its mission is clear and perpetuated. The following are the five-fold purposes as outlined by the Sedgwick County EMS Honor Guard policies and procedures:

The purpose of the honor guard is to represent Sedgwick County EMS in an effort to show our respect, gratitude, pride and integrity as a public service of the community.
To honor and respect SCEMS employees, public servants and lay people by a showing of our service’s decorated, uniformed participants.
To create unity among public services including the fire departments, police department, sheriff department, and other public service and public safety entities.
To portray an image of discipline and professionalism and to teach non-honor guard personnel guidelines for conduct at uniformed events requiring such conduct (i.e. funerals, parades, special events, etc)
To raise public awareness of EMS as a part of the services provided and dedicated to the interests of the community.

Honor Guard Pin:

This is the Commendation Pin that is given only to Honor Guard members. This pin can be worn on all uniforms as an outward display of pride, honor, unity and remembrance.

Honor Guard Procedures

U.S. Flag and Flag Folding Information

http://www.usflag.org/foldflag.html

Visit the the Sedgwick County EMS Honor Guard site for more information.