100 years ago, people in California, Arizona and Nevada couldn’t keep pace with the Red Cross women of Colorado Springs.

Armed with gumption and gauze, they shipped medical supplies to battle-weary troops in epic fashion during World War I. One month’s mailings even outpaced those of the entire Pacific Coast, Gazette archives show.

But that was only the beginning.

Exactly 100 years ago Tuesday, the Pikes Peak Chapter of the American Red Cross gained its official charter – kicking off a century of service touching untold lives across southern Colorado and, especially in those early days, the world.

Its mission has evolved beyond a wartime medical supply hub to something far more ingrained throughout the local community, past and present employees say. Rather than assemble gauze packages by the thousands, volunteers now train people in CPR and teach babysitting classes, all while sheltering people during house fires and some of the worst natural disasters to hit the Pikes Peak region.

But its core mission has largely remained the same.

“It’s a general mission to alleviate suffering, help military with emergency communications,” said Debby Griffith MacSwain, who has volunteered or worked with the nonprofit for about 50 years. “So I guess the overall mission has not really changed.

“The way we do things has changed.”

It all began Nov. 11, 1914, when the local organization formed after a few months of planning – besting the creation of Denver’s chapter by 10 days.
Largely composed of women on the homefront during The Great War, the chapter mailed medical supplies and excelled at fundraising for the war effort, according to a history of the chapter compiled by MacSwain.

Led by businessman and philanthropist Spencer Penrose, one campaign raised more than $200,000 – a total nearing $4.8 million in today’s dollars, when accounting for inflation.

“It is doubtful whether any community in the United States has made a more remarkable record of war work in the first year of America’s participation in the world struggle than has Colorado Springs, thru (sic) the agency of the Pikes Peak chapter of the American Red Cross society,” began one archived article from The Gazette.

After the war, the chapter’s annual budget fell to $800 – and its focus shifted closer to home.

Volunteers staffed a food kitchen and an emergency hospital in when Monument Creek flooded in 1935, killing two people and destroying or damaging hundreds of homes.

The drowning of three children in separate incidents at Prospect Lake in 1937 led the chapter to start a long-running water safety program, MacSwain’s research found.

And long before helping out during the Waldo Canyon fire of 2012 or the Black Forest fire of 2013, the nonprofit specialized in responding to massive blazes. Volunteers offered 24-hour canteen services to firefighters battling a blaze in the 1950s that threatened an area stretching from Fort Carson to The Broadmoor, according to MacSwain.

These days, the nonprofit still responds to disasters, but more often helps find shelter for victims of house fires, or by training people in CPR, said Thomas Gonzalez, the chapter’s executive director.

Its military involvement largely revolves around sending messages from people stateside to troops deployed overseas, such as during family emergencies. The local chapter averaged 3.8 such messages a day from July 1, 2013, through June 30, 2014,, Gonzalez said.

Still, Gonzalez said that challenges remain. In particular, the nonprofit needs to recruit volunteers in rural areas, where only 102 of its 704 volunteers currently live, he said. Doing so would address the issue of moving supplies across the vast distances of southeastern Colorado when disaster strikes, he said.

It is a critical issue – one that speaks to a constant theme to emerge throughout the last century.

“It’s the people that are the Red Cross,” MacSwain said.