Eight years ago, Pingry nurses Joanne Childs and Joy Livak and Health Department Chair Sue Marotto had the foresight to purchase automated external defibrillators (AEDs) for the school. Just a few years after the school acquired the devices, these three staff members found themselves using one to help save the life of staff member Hank Langowski.

Now, thanks to the health department’s requirement that all sophomores learn cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), another life was saved in March 2008. In that case, a Pingry sophomore, trained in CPR by health teacher William Frye, used his newly-certified CPR skills to help save the life of a woman suffering sudden cardiac arrest.

At a special ceremony on May 28, 2008, the American Heart Association (AHA) honored the health department, the Pingry sophomore, and The Pingry School with Heart Saver Hero Awards for their efforts to save lives.

Now retired from Pingry, Hank Langowski attended the ceremony and presented the AHA plaque to Mrs. Childs, Mrs. Livak, and Mrs. Marotto. Laurie Hevenroth, the woman saved by the Pingry sophomore, also attended to thank the Pingry student and the school: “I’m very lucky that Pingry did what they did with having the CPR [course] and making that mandatory.” The AHA also presented plaques to Mr. Frye for teaching the student CPR and to the student’s father for choosing to stop when he saw a crowd gathered around Hevenroth.

The AHA arranged for the ceremony to take place just before the start of National CPR/AED Awareness Week, June 1-7, 2008. The goal of the week is to encourage states and towns to make AEDs more publicly accessible and to encourage more members of the public to learn CPR. A press release from the American Red Cross relating to the week emphasizes the life-saving potential from these measures: “For every minute without defibrillation, a sudden cardiac arrest victim’s chance of surviving drops. It is critical for as many people as possible to be trained to perform CPR and know how to use an AED until advanced help arrives.”

Mrs. Marotto hopes that more public and private schools will join Pingry in placing AEDs within their buildings and in requiring CPR instruction. Upon successful completion of Pingry’s CPR course, students receive the AHA’s certifications for CPR and for using the AED; one must have a current AED certification to use an AED lawfully in N.J.

Pingry Headmaster Nat Conard, who attended the AHA ceremony with other Pingry administrators, echoed Mrs. Marotto’s support for other schools requiring CPR training and purchasing AEDs.

He noted that it was due to the health department’s advocacy that Pingry has AEDs in many places around the campus, including at all outdoor and indoor athletic sites. He also thanked the department for promoting CPR training: “Our health teachers—Sue, Joanne, Joy, and Bill—do an extraordinary job for us. It was before my time that the health department pushed to put in as a required part of the program mandatory CPR training for all of our tenth-graders. But it was obviously a great thing to do, a really forward-thinking thing to do, and something that saves lives . . . and will continue to do so in the future.”



© 2008 The Pingry School