In the early 1950s, "the village," as most residents called Virginia Beach, was a sleepy little resort stretching from Rudee Inlet to 49th Street. It had a population of just 10,000 and just about everyone knew everyone else.

In the village, on a cold December afternoon in 1951, attorney J. Peter Holland III found himself at the scene of an accident. A local woman had been struck by a car near the corner of 24th Street and Atlantic Avenue. Holland called for an ambulance. But when he called, the Fire Department said its ambulance was disabled and unable to help. With nowhere to turn, Holland called the Fort Story Army installation. But the dispensary was hesitant to send assistance because the person injured was not in the military. Holland persisted, and nearly an hour after his initial call, an ambulance from Fort Story responded to take the woman to Virginia Beach General Hospital, just three blocks away.

Peter Holland, thoroughly unsatisfied, rounded up some friends and discussed the urgent need for an active volunteer ambulance service in Virginia Beach. They paid a visit to the rescue squad in Fredericksburg which had been operating successfully for several years. After days of meetings and much discussion, the group returned home with a vision and a plan -- the nucleus for the proposed Princess Anne-Virginia Beach Rescue Squad.

Now that plans for a rescue squad were formulated, much foundation work had to be done. Manpower, money, equipment, training, and a home for the new squad had to be obtained.

The group sought and received $500 from the Virginia Beach City Council and the Princess Anne County Board of Supervisors. John Fitzgerald donated a laundry truck which would be used as a salvage vehicle, and a small boat for water rescues was acquired. The disabled Cadillac ambulance which started Holland and friends on this mission was sold to the fledgling squad for $1, as were a trio of metal buildings on 20th Street and Pacific Avenue, belonging to Standard Oil Company. Two of the buildings were used as garages, while the third became a 10X18 foot "squad house," complete with two home-built bunks, no insulation, an overhead gas heater suspended from the ceiling, and beaverboard walls. First, prospective members took the standard first aid course offered by the American Red Cross, then uniforms and equipment were purchased, and, finally on May 1, 1952 the Princess Anne-Virginia Beach Rescue Squad, Inc. began operations with twenty-two charter members and one associate.

The squad's first call on May 1st was for a drowning. A sailor either fell or jumped from the boardwalk. He was already dead when the rescue squad arrived -- an inauspicious beginning for a rescue squad which would later be know for its lifesaving efforts. 

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