Joanne Mertz, founding force behind Greensburg-area disaster unit and Mutual Aid EMS, dies at 93

When Joanne Mertz planned disaster drills for Greensburg firefighters, she didn’t have to look far for help to play victims.

“Us as kids, we would be the patients,” said her daughter Sandy Young.

Young and her siblings would run around and act hysterical, at their mother’s request, to help the firefighters practice for an emergency situation. The experience eventually led Young to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a nurse.

Joanne Mertz had a huge impact on the evolution of emergency services in Greensburg — she was a driving force behind the creation of the Greater Greensburg Medical Disaster Unit and Mutual Aid EMS.

“The forethought of everything was just incredible,” said her son, Buddy Mertz of Greensburg.

The siblings are proud of what their mother started, a framework that remains in place in Greensburg today, decades later.

“As proud as I am of my mother, and Buddy is, she was just as proud of us,” said Young of Ferrum, Va.

Joanne Eileen Johnson Mertz died Tuesday, July 2, 2024. She was 93.

Born in Greensburg in 1931, she studied nursing after high school and worked as a registered nurse at Westmoreland and Monsour hospitals until the late 1950s. Ambulances and paramedics weren’t commonplace then, and Mrs. Mertz and her late husband, R.E. “Bud” Mertz, would trade off going to emergency calls with Willie Shick, who lived on West Newton Street, and what was then Kepple Funeral Home, their son said.

“Depending on the call, it would be one or the other that would go,” said Buddy Mertz, who is Westmoreland County’s director of public safety.

Those calls would help provide a spark for the future.

“I think that my mother was the leader and at the forefront of a lot of things, but that was because of the crowd she was with,” he said.

In the 1960s, Mrs. Mertz helped create a group to respond to disasters with medical equipment. A Tribune-Review article from 1963 indicated that she and the late Dr. Ameene Makdad came up with the idea while treating those injured in an Oct. 19, 1961, fire at the LaRose Shop on South Main Street in Greensburg. Five died in the blaze and about three dozen others escaped or were rescued by firefighters.

Mrs. Mertz, who was emergency nursing director for the Greensburg fire department, told a reporter in 1963 she was stunned by the disaster and was “made aware of the need for a coordinated plan with medical personnel, emergency equipment and supplies that could be put into use at a moment’s notice.”

The team quickly began responding to emergencies throughout the area and held disaster drills.

She was tasked with looking into establishing an ambulance base, something that was becoming more common around the area. Eventually, Mutual Aid EMS was born in 1968. It remains based in Greensburg and serves 33 communities in Westmoreland and Fayette counties.

“She was able to get a lot of things done, and she had the sweetest personality to accomplish it all,” Buddy Mertz said.

Away from the emergencies, Mrs. Mertz was a family-oriented person who kept in close contact with extended family members. She was a jokester, pleasant but stern when needed, her children said. A cabin in the Ligonier area with a concrete block swimming pool was the source of many memories, with family members stopping by regularly and bringing a dish to eat.

She and her husband operated Mertz Television for 55 years on Clopper Street. The business, the creation of her late husband’s parents, was one of the first television shops in town.

In addition to her husband, Mrs. Mertz was preceded in death by a daughter, Virginia “Ginger” E. Mertz, three sisters and two brothers. She is survived by three grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and Cheryl Millward, whom she thought of as a daughter.

Visitation will be held from 4 to 8 p.m. Friday at Kepple-Graft Funeral Home in Greensburg. Services on Saturday will begin at 9:30 a.m. at the funeral home. Interment will follow in Hillview Cemetery.