By Jasmine Willis
WAYLAND — The local ambulance has been very blessed with the Gary Sinise Foundation in recent months.
Famous Actor Gary Sinise of hit films such as Forrest Gump and I Still Believe formed a charity for veterans and first responders many years ago. The Gary Sinise Foundation has done countless acts of kindness to help honor and service veterans and first responders in need. The foundation has several programs that are made to educate, entertain, inspire, and offer hope to the ones who fought and sacrifice everything for us.
Fred Grambs, Springwater Wayland EMS Chief said that the Gary Sinise Foundation had worked with Cooper Tires to bring brand-new tires to both of the ambulances.
Bobby George, the Gary Sinise Foundation event coordinator worked with Ava Jacobs and Emily Coughlin of Cooper Tires, of Hornell to bring in six Cooper Work Series ASA Load Range G Tires for the A-4 Ambulance; and six Cooper Discover AT3 LT Load Range E Tires for the A-14 Ambulance. The cost of the mounting and balancing of the tires was paid for by Cooper Tires at the Dansville Auto Mart.
“We really appreciate the fact that Cooper Tires offered to work with a local business to facilitate this donation,” he said. “This was a huge savings for us. We were trying to budget for replacement tires for A-4 Ambulance before this winter, and due to the size and load range of the tires we were looking at a cost of around $2,000. We were going to replace the tires on the A-14 Ambulance next year which would’ve cost us another $1,800.”
Grambs said normally the ambulance runs the Wayland Family Fun Days to make up the cost of maintenance for the vehicles and such.
“Normally, we run the Wayland Family Fun Days and we would raise the money we needed. We would do this through festivals and other drives in the year. With Covid 19 we had to cancel the Wayland Family Fun Days and doing personal fund raisers in nearly impossible. This charitable donation from the foundation came at a perfect time for the Springwater Wayland EMS.” he said.
Springwater Wayland EMS are still waiting on hearing from the contractors on some work that is needed to do the decontamination room. Hopefully, they will be in shape to work on that project in the near future.
Grambs said the ambulance feels very lucky with the donations and help they have gotten so far this year.
For more information on The Gary Sinise Foundation visit https://www.garysinisefoundation.org