As a senior during the Vietnam War, Brian Kuntz received his draft notice. Kuntz decided, instead, to join the Navy upon graduation.

“This was in Boston where I grew up. I liked the water so I thought, ‘join the Navy,’” he said.

Kuntz trained at Naval Station Great Lakes.

“My first assignment was the USS Orion, which is a submarine tender,” Kuntz said. With certification as a Boatswain’s Mate, he later transferred to the helicopter carrier USS Inchon.

While on the shakedown cruise on the Inchon, he had his only close encounter with the enemy.

“We went to (Guantanamo Bay, Cuba) and the Russian subs would come up close,” he said.

In Cuban waters, the crew also had to repel boarders — Cubans who would swim or float out to the ships hoping to escape the Communist regime.

Repelling boarders, working with cranes and nuclear warheads and operating 50-foot utility boats — some of his navy duties — mostly do not translate easily to civilian occupations. He hadn’t considered the health care field until a vocational test upon separation from active duty showed an aptitude for respiratory therapy.

“When I looked at the curriculum, I had to learn a foreign language. I barely got out of high school with English,” he said with a laugh.

Later, Kuntz was a bystander when he witnessed an accident. He tried to comfort the victim. “Nobody knew what to do, including me,” Kuntz said. “Finally an ambulance showed up. They were all volunteer and it took a long time.”

Kuntz took first-aid courses and joined a volunteer fire department in Connecticut. He then decided to use his GI Bill to go to nursing school at Atlantic Union College, Lancaster, Mass. graduating with an associate degree in nursing.

After working in a rural hospital in Virginia, he came to Kettering in 1975. He received paramedic credentials through a program at Good Samaritan Hospital and worked in the ER at KMC as well as volunteering for local fire departments.“

One thing from his past did possibly portend his choice of a health care profession. On the wall of his office is a large poster — autographed — of the TV series Emergency.

“Those guys were my heroes growing up,” he said of the fictional paramedic team.

Kuntz is now one of them.