By PAMELA ROBINSON Register Staff Report
Cooke County Emergency Medical Services (EMS) director Bob Harbin retired Friday after 20 years of service. He said he would describe his last official day in the office as, “strange.”
The EMS is the building on South Chestnut with the ambulances in front. Their department transports people in emergency situations to hospitals or medical facilities, mainly to North Texas Medical Center and Muenster Memorial Hospital. Harbin said they also transfer patients out of the county when they require some certain specialized treatment and sometimes they will be taken by air ambulance.
Harbin said he became aware of the field of emergency medical services in Vietnam. He said he saw what the medics did and felt it would be a good field for him.
“This stuff just gets in your blood,” Harbin explained. “The work is meaningful and I loved working on the ambulance. I worked for many years as a paramedic.”
We respond to approximately 3,300 emergency calls a year, which averages about 300 each month,” he said. “I think we’ve done real good. In the last five years we’ve added three additional EMS stations out in the county and that’s getting us a whole lot quicker to the citizens. Some of these calls when you’re running from Gainesville down to Rosston, you’re 30 minutes, cause we cover all Cookie County.”
Harbin named some of his accomplishments. Hiring good personnel for the department was first on the list.
“We hire good people and we make them even much better,” Harbin said. “I would match our personnel up with anyone within 500 miles.”
His said his second choice for accomplishment is, “training our fire department, first responder personnel, and working closely with them, cause it is a long way out there sometimes and we have some good personnel out there to help us.”
He also cited getting the 911 system in and leadership as bringing success to the EMS department. “You’ve got the rules and regulations,” he said of leadership, “but you’ve also got to be able to work well with personnel, to encourage them. It’s been a job.”
Harbin said EMS is now looking toward putting another station near Valley View and Mountain Springs sometime in the future because of increasing growth down there.
Born in Whitesboro, his family moved soon after to Snyder. After his dad died when he was 12, he moved to Dublin. After high school he went into the army, got out, and went to college. He graduated in emergency medical services from Howard College at Big Spring.
In between college graduation and moving to Gainesville, Harbin taught EMS for four years at Howard College and then worked 11 years with Fisher County Hospital District.
He met his wife Karen in Snyder, where they knew each other for many years. Together they had five children, two boys and three girls. He also has five grandchildren.
In his spare time, he said he likes to do woodworking and likes making things for the kids. He also spends time working on the house and joked that now that he’s retiring, his work on the house may increase.
Brian Ganns, previous shift captain, will now be filling Harbin’s shoes as director. “He crazily agreed to accept it,” Harbin joked.
Ganns said of Harbin, “He has been a real fair guy and he keeps us on our toes. He has been a good mentor.”
