It was a day for goodbyes to long-serving staffers when the East Hampton Village Board met on Friday, as the retirements of Ralph Gibson, medical director, and Jeff Verity, of the Department of Public Works, were reluctantly accepted.
Dr. Gibson saved Mayor Jerry Larsen’s life during the Covid-19 pandemic, the mayor recalled in explaining that he did not personally read a proclamation honoring the doctor’s tireless efforts for the village’s emergency personnel, as emotions over that ordeal remained strong.
Mary Ellen McGuire, the ambulance chief, referred to Sir William Osler, often described as the father of modern medicine. “He said that a good physician treats the disease,” she said of Osler. “The great physician treats the patient who has the disease. Dr. Gibson, you’re definitely the great physician.”
“Let’s face it,” Ms. McGuire continued, “nobody has on their bucket list, ‘I want to be in the back of an ambulance, sick.’ It’s the most vulnerable position. You’re on your back. You’re with a bunch of strangers. They’re looking at you. People might look worried. You’re certainly worried. You’re driving backwards, strapped in, with sirens blaring. Doesn’t get much more vulnerable than that. But Dr. Gibson helped his patient a lot by just introducing the patient to us, letting us know that we were the best, that this was the way for him to get to the hospital safely — always treating the patient.”
“I asked Ralph to be our village police doctor,” the mayor, who was formerly chief of the Police Department, recalled. “Not only did he become the police doctor, but he took on every role within our village and our town that he could. And all for free.”
When the mayor contracted Covid-19 in 2021, he was hospitalized but released, misdiagnosed with pneumonia. “I was home because I’d been released from the emergency room, and I really wasn’t with it,” he said. “My wife, luckily, contacted Ralph,” and together they convinced him to return to the hospital, despite a first experience there that he described as “a nightmare,” including six hours waiting for a bed and a release without being treated for the virus.
“Ralph said, ‘If you don’t go back to the hospital, you’re going to be dead,’ “ the mayor said. “I went back to the hospital and again went through the whole procedure, and then finally was able to get admitted. Then a man came in with a space suit on, gave me some medication which was experimental at the time, and the next day I was better. It was amazing. I spent a whole, like, 10 days in the hospital. But thank God for my wife and my doctor, who got me through it.”
In a proclamation read aloud, Dr. Gibson was called “a steadfast pillar of the East Hampton health care community” who for 24 years “has generously served gratis as medical director for the Village Police Department, 911 emergency services, the Village Ambulance Association, the Amagansett Ambulance, and for every defibrillator within the Town of East Hampton, duties essential to public safety and mandated by New York State.” His “hard work and dedication have saved countless lives, including the mayor’s own, a testament to his extraordinary skill, compassion, and unwavering commitment to the people he served.”
Verity Was a Constant
Mr. Verity, said David Collins, superintendent of Public Works, joined the village on March 1, 1996. A “constant behind-the-scenes person that just makes our village work and look beautiful,” he did work that most did not see, “because he’s driving in from the farthest reaches of Northwest at 2 o’clock in the morning in all kinds of weather to jump on a salt truck, to make the roads passable for the school buses, and that type of thing.”
He was the caretaker at the Sea Spray Cottages for 15 years, Mr. Collins said. “I was dreading the day that he comes through and tells me that he’s going to retire, because he’s a guy you don’t want to lose. But I’m proud of him.”
“Thirty years is a very long time to be doing anything, let alone to work in a Highway Department where, like Dave was saying, it’s a lot of hard work, late hours, long hours, especially in snowstorms and everything else,” the mayor said. “But I have to say, our Highway Department is probably the best in the county, at least. We put so much work on them, and it really pays off. If you look around our village, it’s beautiful. . . . They work hard to keep it that way.”
