A legacy, a wedding and a promise for future Pirate nurses

Ed Demaree and Sandy Brotherton will be married in March and are using their wedding as a way to raise scholarship funds in honor of Ed’s sister Pam, a Pirate nurse killed in an air ambulance helicopter crash.

The brother and bride-to-be of a Pirate nurse who died in an attempted life-saving air ambulance crash four decades ago are using their union to raise scholarship funds for East Carolina University nursing students.

Pam Demaree’s brother, Ed, and Sandy Brotherton, will be married on the South Carolina coast in late March. In lieu of gifts, they are asking family and friends to consider donating to a scholarship in Pam’s honor.

The Demaree family is properly Purple and Gold.

Pam was already at ECU when Ed arrived from their hometown of Raleigh. Two other sisters followed — one also became a Pirate nurse and the other an accountant.

Ed moved to Charleston in 1989 where more than two decades later he met Sandy Brotherton, who was raised in Creedmoor.

A mutual commitment to running brought them together nine years ago. They started out as friends, but after a year they went from running buddies to something more.

On the deck of a beach venue on the Isle of Palms March 28, they will formalize their shift from running partners to partners in life.

A Dedication to Healing

Pam Demaree was one of the first nurses to join the newly formed EastCare air ambulance team in 1986 but had worked for Pitt County Memorial Hospital for several years before that.

“She was a travel nurse for a while and then joined the team at EastCare,” Ed said.

When Dr. Mary Jo Nimmo, an ECU clinical associate professor of nursing, joined EastCare shortly after it started, she was paired with Pam. Nimmo was a trauma nurse, Pam worked in cardiac medicine. They balanced one another out.

They were quickly nicknamed ‘inhale’ and ‘exhale’ — they were temperamentally opposites, but got along like peanut butter and jelly.

“From the moment we were matched up ’til her death, we were best friends,” Nimmo remembers. They tried to fly with other people, but Nimmo said it just didn’t work out as well. They were too good together.

Pam Demaree, bottom row with short brown hair, poses with the other members of the EastCare team in front of a helicopter.

Nimmo has so many stories to tell about Pam and their work together. One time a school bus got hit by a tractor trailer near Snow Hill and they were first on the scene.

“Five kids and the truck driver were killed in that accident. It was bad. It was really bad,” Nimmo said. She taught Pam a lesson that day – how to recognize which patients they could save, and those they couldn’t.

Another time they were called to a “horrific” vehicle accident near Plymouth; two vans collided head on and none of the passengers were wearing seatbelts. Nimmo said she “cannot do broken bones,” and there were a slew of them at the hospital that day. When moving one patient she heard the crunch of a broken arm and started to see stars.

“I’ll never forget Pam yelling, ‘Mary Jo, Mary Jo — you cannot pass out. You cannot pass out!’” Nimmo recalled.

The crash that took Pam’s life, one of 172 missions she had flown, was difficult for Nimmo. Not only did she lose her best friend, but she lost her teammate. They spoke on the phone right before the fatal flight and Pam confided that she and her boyfriend were getting very serious.

“She said, ‘I’ll talk to you when I get back,’ and of course, she never came back,” Nimmo said.

Nimmo hopes that the scholarship that carries her friend’s name will continue the work Pam did while she was still alive.

“She was a giver. She would do anything she could to make sure somebody interested in emergency medicine understood what the future held for them,” Nimmo said.

Gifts of Education

Sandy received her undergraduate degree in physical therapy at UNC and her Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina. She was a professor in the physical therapy program at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston for over 30 years. During that time, she frequently heard students talk about the burden of debt and became interested in finding ways to relieve that burden. She and four other physical therapy colleagues, who retired together, started a scholarship for physical therapy students.

Thus, when it came time to select gifts for a registry, Sandy and Ed decided they already have everything they need — they are asking guests and well-wishers to consider donating to scholarships honoring Pam or the Come Together Physical Therapy Endowed Scholarship.

“We’ve accumulated years of stuff; we don’t need anything more,” Sandy said.

The Demaree-McGinnis Endowed Scholarship also memorializes Mike McGinnis, a fellow ECU alumnus, who was the chief flight nurse and also perished in the crash.

In its 39-year history, the scholarship has provided more than $15,000 to 19 ECU College of Nursing students.

ECU is celebrating the impact of scholarships like the Demaree-McGinnis endowment during its 10th annual Pirate Nation Gives (PNG) on March 4. Donors can honor the couple’s gift request and complete their donation during PNG.

Ed and Sandy hope that their example will encourage others in their position — celebrating a new marriage, but already well established — to consider philanthropy.

“Especially for second marriages it’s a nice way to honor someone,” Sandy said. “Pam died long before Ed and I met but it was clear that she was still ever present in his mother’s mind. I felt it would be a special gift.”

Sandy and Ed are still running together. The Cooper River Bridge Run, where they took their first photo together, is the morning of their wedding.

There is probably too much going on to swap running shorts in the morning for a wedding dress and coat and tie in the afternoon, but the wedding will serve as their own private starting line for a life together. They hope their example will encourage others to donate to the scholarships that will clear a path for the nurses and physical therapists who follow in Sandy’s, and Pam’s, footsteps.

More Blogs