John Moon, one of the original Freedom House trail blazers visited with Jim Cunningham to talk about the exhibit in the City County Building lobby celebrating the work of the pioneers in providing lifesaving medical services when few others were willing to venture in to Pittsburgh’s Hill District in the sixties and seventies. The life savers set a world wide model for how to provide care on the scene. Hear all about it and watch the program on demand from the WQED website and the PBS App. It took 300 hours of medical training for the initial team of 24 amid racial tension. They were the only trained EMTs in the country and provided a lesson for the world.

Now, the Pittsburgh Bureau of EMS is launching a new pilot program called Freedom House EMT Training, in honor of the original Freedom House Ambulance Service. This program will allow residents to obtain their EMT certifications which allow them to transition to the bureau as full-time employees. Anyone interested in applying should visit PGHJOBS.NET or pittsburghpa.gov/ems for more information. “In the 1960s, there was absolutely no EMS service in this country, no one trained to the extent we were. Here in Pittsburgh we wrote and developed the paramedic training program that paramedics began using throughout the United States,” said Moon. Today John Moon travels extensively to tell the Pittsburgh story.

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Original airdate: Jan 11, 2023

WQED-FM’s Anna Singer spoke with Annette Banks, producer of the new WQED-TV documentary “Freedom House Ambulance: The First Responders.” Airing on Thursday January 12th at 8pm on WQED, the documentary tells the story of the paramedics of Freedom House Ambulance which was initially conceived to respond to the needs of Pittsburgh’s African American community who often times, couldn’t rely on police and fire departments during an emergency. With rare archival images, the program features the story of inception from an original founder, compelling reflections of surviving paramedics, stories of the world-renowned doctors who trained them, and memories of lifelong Hill District residents.