Whitehall Public Library honors Freedom House Ambulance with summer reading program

Whitehall Public Library is dedicating its summer reading program to the remarkable and largely untold story of the Freedom House Ambulance Service, a pioneering Pittsburgh initiative that revolutionized emergency medical care.

John Moon, a former Freedom House emergency medical technician and retired assistant chief of Pittsburgh Emergency Medical Service, wasn’t expecting to get emotional when he read his copy of “American Sirens.” Moon said the book fulfilled the desires of his heart by showing details of his life from childhood and his journey to becoming one of the original paramedics of Freedom House.

“It gets the legacy of Freedom House out to the world, because it has been dormant for well over 50 years,” Moon said.

The library will host a conversation about the book “American Sirens” by journalist and paramedic Kevin Hazzard on July 30. The event will include a discussion with Moon and a screening of the documentary “Freedom House Ambulance: The First Responders” by Annette Banks, produced by WQED.

Freedom House Ambulance Service was the first emergency medical service in the U.S., founded in 1967 by Peter Safar, a physician and the father of CPR, who envisioned a medically trained ambulance service.

“We brought the emergency room to you,” Moon said. “We had to educate the community on what they were getting. You could expect that a person treated by Freedom House had an IV if it was needed, we’d know the heart rate and blood pressure. The standard was high.”

Moon grew up in Atlanta, Ga., and moved to Pittsburgh in 1963. He started with Freedom House when he was 22. Moon also said that the book highlights a career path that is often taken for granted until the moment someone is needed.

Freedom House came about because of an urgent need. Prior to Freedom House, police officers would respond to all emergencies, including medical emergencies. Being transported to the hospital was often left to the discretion of the police. The police and the Black community had a contentious relationship, and back then, Moon explained, the police had an adversarial relationship with residents of the Hill District, which often left people in dire situations.

Freedom House was founded in the Hill District, giving patients emergency care and then transporting them to hospitals. Nancy Caroline worked as the medical director at Freedom House. Under the teaching of Safar and Caroline, the all-Black staff of Freedom House served the entire city, bringing a new level of unprecedented care that set the foundation for Emergency Medical Services.

The team ran until 1975, when the City of Pittsburgh took over emergency services. An almost all-white crew replaced the Black personnel of Freedom House.

Moon is most proud of the challenges Freedom House faced and overcame, using them as motivators instead of distractions to be better than what anyone expected.

“The ironic part is this was all done by Black men who, by society’s standards, would not amount to anything. Society made one mistake when it talked about Freedom House — it didn’t tell us,” Moon said.

The personnel of Freedom House were unaware of the world changing thing they had embarked on, so, they went about living in the moment and helping any underserved, neglected community get the best medical care in this country, according to Moon. Their primary goal was taking care of the community, not necessarily setting a gold standard.

Because of political and racial tensions, the story of Freedom House and the contributions that African Americans made to emergency medical services and the medical field go overlooked or completely erased, according to Whitehall Public Library director Paula Kelly, making the need to tell this story more relevant than ever, especially now.

“What was done to make Freedom House go away was deeply unsettling,” Kelly said. “You know, here I was, alive at that time, albeit a young person, and this was happening less than six miles from my home. Not only did I not learn about it even as an adult … but the Hill District might as well have been another planet, especially during that time.”

The choosing of the title was by no coincidence. Both Moon and Kelly said that the nonfiction novel moves quickly and is a page-turner. It is highly readable, according to Kelly.

“It’s an important story and also a damn good book,” Kelly said.

Kelly added that these types of stories may be more heard of inside the city, but they get lost as you get more into the suburbs of Western Pennsylvania.

“What I want folks to understand is that you see your EMS system here, and you thought it was always there, so you take it for granted,” Moon said. “But the foundation of every EMS system in this country, if not the world, rests on the shoulders of a group of Blacks in an underserved neighborhood.”

Whitehall Reads runs through August. “The First Responders: A Special Movie Screening” will take place in Whitehall Library community room at 6:30 p.m. July 30. To register and learn more, visit whitehallpubliclibrary.org.