Ken Nethken runs a Volkswagen repair shop in Fishersville, a town just outside of Staunton. He had his retired brother's 12-year-old ambulance idly sitting unused in an adjacent field, and has recently found a thoughtful - and globe-spanning - way to use the vehicle.
“The government of Liberia only has six ambulances to work over there, and they’ve got three thousand requests every day to pick up sick people. So I decided the ambulance would do a whole lot better job in Liberia than it would to sit in the field here at my shop.”
Nethken says he made phone calls to various embassies of countries he thought could use the extra emergency vehicle to no avail. So, he went the extra mile.
“I just had to go to Washington, DC, and start knocking on doors of embassies and whatnot, and finally – I succeeded.”
Nethken transferred the vehicle’s title to a Ford dealership in Staunton that donated it for him - and dropped it off at the Embassy last week. He says he’s working on devising a more cost-effective way to get additional emergency vehicles over to areas struggling with the Ebola outbreak – and says if anyone knows of an unused ambulance, give him a call and he’ll help you with the process.
You can reach him at his shop - Nethken Associates - at 540-337-1777.