Freedom House revolutionized emergency care
An anxious police officer on the radio spits out the details.
Child on a bike sideswiped by a bus in Squirrel Hill. Leg nearly severed. Massive bleeding. "Send a Freedom House ambulance."
"I can't. It's not their district," the dispatcher says.
It's the early 1970s and for Freedom House Enterprises Ambulance Service -- operated and staffed by black people who respond to emergencies in the predominately black Hill District and parts of Oakland -- mostly white Squirrel Hill is out of bounds.
The officer insists. "You better send someone here that knows what the hell they're doing."
The Freedom House ambulance went to the scene that day -- signaling an innovative approach to emergency medical service: skilled care at the scene and aboard ambulances equipped like compact intensive-care units.
Until then, such care began at the emergency-room door.
What began in the mid-1960s as a way to give unemployed black residents of the Hill District jobs driving huckster wagons evolved into a minority-run ambulance service that was in the vanguard of the civil rights movement and modern emergency medicine.
"I was part of something that was very special and very unique. We were very proud of what we did. They can't take that away from us," says Walt Brown, 58, of the North Side, who trained in 1967 as part of the first class of Freedom House emergency medical technicians and worked for the service for eight years.
Walt Brown, 58, of the North Side, who trained in 1967 as part of the first class of Freedom House emergency medical technicians and worked for the service for eight years.
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Veterans of the ambulance service appear in a 60-minute documentary about the organization, to be presented Thursday in Oakland at an invitation-only screening co-sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh and Hill House Association. It tells a remarkable story set in an unlikely time and place, said creator Gene Starzenski, a South Side native who works as a Los Angeles paramedic.
The occasion celebrates Black History Month and marks the 40th anniversary of the founding of Freedom House Ambulance Service, which vanished without fanfare in 1975 when it was absorbed by the city's new Emergency Medical Services division.
John Moon, 58, now assistant chief of Pittsburgh EMS, got his start with Freedom House in the '70s, and he vividly recalls the injured bike rider in Squirrel Hill. His team saved the boy's life. The dialogue Moon overheard on the police radio showed that Pittsburghers outside the Hill, including city police, were beginning to give Freedom House overdue recognition and respect.
"Freedom House was the foundation of every EMS system in this country," Moon said.
Starzenski, 55, started interviewing Freedom House veterans in 1984 and began making the documentary in fall 2001. He is an ex-Marine military policeman who worked for ambulance services in Pittsburgh in the early '70s.
Most ambulances then were little more than taxis. Equipment included, at most, a gurney, oxygen bottle and rudimentary first-aid supplies.
Most Pittsburghers who needed emergency medical care waited for a police wagon to cart them to a hospital.
"No one had even heard of EMTs at the time, and (Freedom House responders) were already doing advanced life support," Starzenski said. "They were the pioneers."
It wasn't by design.
"This program started during the civil rights movement that was going to train African-American men to drive huckster trucks -- fresh fruit and vegetable trucks -- up through the Hill District," Starzenski said.
Then a number of minds came together, and a unique opportunity emerged.
The brain trust included Philip Hallen, then-president of the Maurice Faulk Medical Fund; Dr. Peter Safar, a University of Pittsburgh Medical School anesthesiologist who developed a method of cardiopulmonary resuscitation; Freedom House founder and civil rights activist Jim McCoy; project director Gerald Esposito; and others.
Freedom House was a nonprofit community development corporation. Hallen heard about a program to train unemployed blacks to drive produce trucks, approached McCoy and suggested the plan be changed to address health-care needs.
"My notion was that something bigger could take place," says Hallen, 76.
Safar had an idea.
"His notion was that you could train anybody to do CPR," Hallen said. "Well, this training program went way beyond what anybody expected at the time. The curriculum which was developed was the first hospital-based program for training EMTs."
The first training program began in October 1967 with 44 "ambulance attendant" trainees. The program included about 300 hours of classroom and clinical work, followed by nine months of physician-supervised, on-the-job training. The trainees learned CPR, basic nursing, rescue techniques and defensive driving. They assisted in autopsies to study anatomy. They learned to deliver babies.
The vehicles were designed to Safar's specifications and outfitted with electrocardiogram monitors, intravenous drips, intubation kits, blood pressure cuffs and defibrillators.
Presbyterian Hospital in Oakland offered to house the fledgling ambulance service, launched through a combination of federal anti-poverty funds and foundation money raised by Hallen and others.
Morton Coleman, an aide to Pittsburgh Mayor Joseph Barr, coordinated poverty program funds. He said Hallen's idea seemed a "win-win."
"Phil felt there was a way of creating a whole new emergency care and at the same time developing upward mobility for minorities. I thought, 'Hey, if it works, it's wonderful.' And I thought it worked extremely well," said Coleman, 72.
Mitchell Brown, 59, director of public safety for Columbus, Ohio, was a Freedom House recruit in 1969.
"We started out as ambulance attendants, and as the nomenclature evolved, we became paramedics," said Brown, who eventually became director of Freedom House. "They had taken on the concept of bringing medical care into the community, and that was fascinating."
For more information about Starzenski's documentary, visit www.freedomhousedoc.com