Dr. Zydlo, born and raised in Chicago, transferred to Missouri Military Academy (MMA) in 1948. After graduating from MMA, he earned an undergraduate degree from Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri and a medical degree from Stritch School of Medicine at Loyola University in Chicago. From there, he went on to educate himself at the School of Aerospace Medicine at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas, which would ultimately lead him to serve his country as a flight surgeon for the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was awarded Flight Surgeon of the Year in 1963.   

His primary role in the Air Force was to assess the physical and psychological fitness of pilots and crew members who fly planes with nuclear weapons between a base in Arkansas and the Soviet Union – a mission he often flew on. But as his title suggests, being a flight surgeon meant there were times he was called on for emergency medical services. In an interview with The Herald in 1978, he recalls pulling soldiers from airplanes before they exploded and treating them in ambulances under extreme circumstances.  

 After his service, Dr. Zydlo spent a few years working for a family practice in Wabash, Indiana before moving back to his hometown in Chicago to work at Northwest Community Hospital. There, he realized a disturbing phenomenon – ambulance service employees had no medical training and took no lifesaving measures to help patients en route to the hospital, which often meant the patient would die, or their condition would be irreversible, before reaching any doctors.   

This reality was not uncommon – prior to the 1970s, ambulance service employees would collect patients suffering from serious medical emergencies or victims of a trauma without any medical training or medical equipment on hand.   

Knowing the potential of en route care, Dr. Zydlo began to advocate for a revised system. In true MMA spirit, he became a leader on his own mission – he partnered with an activist equally dedicated to creating mobile medical care and started providing paramedic training to firefighters. He became the founding medical director of the Northwest Community Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and the president of Medical Emergency Services Associated (MESA), and he lobbied for legislative change every step of the way.   

“People shouldn’t die because someone doesn’t have the letter’s M.D. on their collar. In those days, it was as if the ambulance driver doubled as the funeral director!” Dr. Zydlo told the Chicago Tribune in a 1994 interview. “Devising a system of paramedics to serve [Chicago] was my chance to really help people, to really make a difference.”  

In 1992, Dr. Zydlo won the Ronald D. Stewart Award, which is reserved for outstanding individuals who have made a lasting, major contribution to the national emergency medical community.   

In addition to his trailblazing accomplishments, Dr. Zydlo was an editor for the American Medical Association First Air Guide, was a contributor to the American Medical Association’s Handbook of First Aid and Emergency Care and the Board Exam for the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP).  

He served as a member of the Chicago Committee on Trauma of American College of Surgeons, the American Hospital Association’s Committee on Emergency Telecommunications, the State of Illinois Mobile Intensive Care Unit Advisory Board, the Illinois State Medical Society, Chicago Medical Society, Aerospace Medical Association, Society of USAF Flight Surgeons and the American Institute of Astronautics and Aeronautics.