Every morning and every night, Dr. Patrick O'Hara thanks his Creator.

He doesn't ask why he fell victim to Lou Gehrig's disease before he retired his stethoscope. He doesn't rail against his imprisonment in a body that barely responds to his mind's requests, and he doesn't get furious with the wheelchair that now sets the parameters of his life.

O'Hara, 67, focuses on thankfulness.

His is a life, he said, that has given him much to appreciate.

O'Hara, dubbed "the father of the local Emergency Medical Technician program," is being honored Wednesday by fellow physicians, the community and many of its leaders.

"I just did what I felt I needed to do," he said, his black motorized wheelchair angled to give him a view into the back yard of the Vestal home he shares with his wife of 43 years, Bonnie.

As a partner in the Physician Services Associates, he began working in local emergency rooms in 1965. In those days, it was said, a soldier wounded in Vietnam stood a better chance at survival than someone injured in a traffic accident in the United States.

O'Hara, fresh from a stint as a Navy physician at a dispensary in Norfolk, Va., was staggered to find that most of those who drove emergency vehicles in the Southern Tier had no medical training.

"It was all about horizontal transport at rapid speed right into the early '70s," said Raymond Serowik of the Broome County Office of Emergency Services.

O'Hara asked the Broome County Medical Society for a training program for transport personnel.

"If these people don't get to my emergency room alive, there's nothing I can do for them," he told them. "They said, 'Great idea -- do it!' "

So he did, creating a curriculum and enlisting medical specialists to share their knowledge with men and women who would become the county's first trained ambulance personnel.

"He did it virtually out of thin air," Serowik said. "Not only did he start it, he stayed personally committed to it for years."

When it came time for New York to develop a statewide EMS program in 1968, it adopted O'Hara's curriculum.

"I saw firsthand the improvement in pre-emergency room care and an increase in survival rate in all categories of problems," a colleague, Dr. John F. Spring, wrote recently in a letter to state Sen. Thomas W. Libous. "The increases were directly related to the teaching and curriculum developed by Dr. O'Hara."

It was one of many letters from friends and fellow clinicians encouraging Libous to obtain recognition for O'Hara for the enormous impact of his contribution to life in Greater Binghamton and beyond.

Libous, R-Binghamton, heard them and responded. He brought a resolution to the state Senate. Assembyman Robert Warner, R-Vestal, introduced a similar one in the Assembly. The joint resolution will be given to O'Hara during the program to honor him on Wednesday evening.

It will be the finishing touch on a long career of service.

In 1995, O'Hara retired from local hospitals' emergency rooms to work at United Medical Associates walk-in clinics. In November 2001, he found himself experiencing unexplained weakness in his left side.

Then he began stumbling.

"He was practically tripping on sidewalk cracks," Bonnie O'Hara said.

Last October, he worked his last day as a physician. In November, he was diagnosed himself.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a progressive neurological disease that strikes nerve cells in the spinal cord and brain. It affects almost 30,000 adults in the nation; about 5,000 new cases are diagnosed every year.

The mind is unaffected by the disease, but every day with ALS brings a new battery of physical challenges. When an already-weakened O'Hara once tumbled from his wheelchair, it took three people to set his 5-foot-11-inch, 180-pound frame back in the chair again.

Now, as other people learn of O'Hara's illness, cards and letters have been pouring in, his wife said.

She's learning how much her husband's four decades of medicine mattered to the patients who received it, and how many lives were touched by his compassion. Thanks to the programs he created, 750 emergency medical providers are active in Broome County.

"Wow, I married a pretty amazing guy," she said.

But now the hands that set bones and stitched wounds for so long rest heavily on O'Hara's lap. He can sometimes grasp his electric toothbrush, but he can't turn it on and off.

Bedsheets and blankets are too heavy for him to lift, and he's unable to adjust them during the night. Sometimes in the morning, his wife finds him chilled, but uncomplaining.

"I tell him to call me if he's hot or cold, but he never does," she said.

O'Hara is trying his best to stay upbeat, to count the blessings of a long life well lived.

A Binghamton policeman and his schoolteacher wife adopted him when he was nine weeks old. Kathryn and Emmett O'Hara taught their son about love, the importance of family and the need for faith.

"The best thing that ever happened to me was meeting Bonnie," Pat O'Hara said. "You couldn't ask for a better wife, mother, grandmother or friend."

As much as he loved medicine, he said, he loved Bonnie and his five children more.

"He arranged his schedule for all (our children's) activities, not just sports, but all the things school kids do," his wife said. "And he did the same for his grandchildren up until this all happened."

The hardest part is watching his children and grandchildren try to come to grips with the changes in their family, his wife said.

"It's breaking his heart that he can't see all the (grandkids') games now," she said.

Sometimes, he cries quietly when he talks about the disease.

"It's not very often, but he'll say 'It's a terrible disease, it's a terrible way to die,' " she said. "He'd prefer to have a massive coronary or something like that."

She knows he's angry sometimes.

"But he holds back for our sake," she said. "He doesn't want to hurt us."

They try not to dwell on the sadness, but rather on the bountiful joys their life together has brought.

"He's thankful for having lived a good life," she said.

And at the twilight of a life filled with family and community service, the disease has added its own bittersweet blessing.

"He's been grateful he's been able to put things in order," his wife said. "How many people get that chance?"

They have so much to be thankful for, she said. It's an emotion that resonates among many who have known her husband and are aware of his character and contributions.

"He's a saint here amongst us, pure and simple," said Nicholas Panko of Johnson City, one of the first in Broome County trained as an EMT.

Every time his longtime friends Helen and Charlie Sax see an emergency squad on the Vestal Parkway, they think of him, Helen Sax said.

"The people in that ambulance have been trained, and the person will have a better chance to survive," she said. "Thank God for Pat O'Hara."