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Short Stuff: Freedom House Ambulance Services · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Dave Kustan the producers here in spirit,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: but not really. He'll hear this eventually, and I'll bet
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: he just got a warm feeling from the shout out. Uh.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: And since I said all that, it's short stuff, so
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: let's go audios. Yeah, and you want to really mess
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: with people sense of time and space. Yes, I'm picking
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Nica wafers out of my teeth as we record this.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: That should be a little hint. I'm actually refraining from
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: eating one right now. Oh really, you're trying, but you
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: want to? I do. I kind of like to go
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: wafers now. I mean, I'm not crazy for him, but
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: I do like him. Chuck. All right, So this is um.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: This is part of our Black History Month content, A
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: very cool story about the Freedom House Ambulance Service, which
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: you know we did. Did we do one on E
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: M T S or ambulances or what was the name
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: of that? Paramedics? We do one on paramedics. We've done
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: one on CPR, which is I think where Dr Peter
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Safar's name. Sure, we've done one on medical stand ins.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: I can't remember remember practice patients. Oh yeah, yeah, well,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: I can't believe we did an episode on that. It's
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: like one of the most obscure things that exist. But
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: this one. I knew nothing about this, And then as
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: I was researching, I was like, oh, Visible did one.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: They're basically like our our Simpsons did it to our
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: South Park. Basically. It's crazy. Romans always one step ahead
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: of it, he is. I was looking up the Mohave
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: phone booth. You ever heard of that? No, but I'm
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: sure Roman knows everything about it. He does. He does.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: It's like, why even do a short stuff on it
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: now because there's Visible, But this one, I would say,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: go listen to the Visible episode. I haven't heard it yet,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: but I'm sure it's quite good. This is still worth
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: talking about here too. Yeah, and it also really highlights
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: our long motto w W R M D What would
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Roman Mars do? That's right, he would talk about the
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Freedom House ambul Services, which is one of the most
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: astounding origin stories I've ever heard in my entire life. Yeah.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's pretty easy to think about the fact
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: that you call an ambulance today and someone's going to
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: show up that actually knows how to save your life. UM.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't that long ago, as recently as fifty
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: years that ambulances were sort of like taxi vans that
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: would show up and drive you as fast as they
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: could to the hospital and hope that you weren't Yeah,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: I hope that you wouldn't die. UM. And that changed
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: between UM nineteen sixty seven and nineteen seventy five, when
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: a low income neighborhood in Pittsburgh, the Hill District, launched
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: an ambulance service that actually featured trained, uh, gentlemen. They
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: I don't think there were any women as a part
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: of this first run, but trained gentlemen that could actually
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: help save your life before and as they took you
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: to the hospital. Yes. So like the the history of
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: e m t s, of paramedics, of emergency medical services,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: of this idea of an ambulance staffed with people who
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: knew how to UM, to perform life saving procedures and
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: had equipment in their car that could help them perform
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: life saving procedures started out in a traditionally black, low
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: income community in Pittsburgh, and the first c m t
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: s were young members of this community. That's where it
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: all came from. Everything we understand about paramedics today that
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: had nothing to do with military UM medicine came from this,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: which I just am astounded by. I think it's so cool,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: it's awesome. Uh and also like terrible that we didn't
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: even know about this when we did the the E. M.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: T episode. I thought so too, Like that's how little
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: known it is, so even we hadn't heard of it.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Ure Roman new Yeah, of course, uh so in nineties,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Like he probably listened to that episode and was like,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: that's weird that the guys didn't talk about the Freedom House.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: He was probably more like, what do I even listen
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: to these two? I don't think he does it anymore.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Um So. Pittsburgh Hills Hill District in the nineteen sixties
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: was a place where if you and this is just
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: like so many African American communities back then and even
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: still today, if you called an ambulance you were lucky
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: if one came at all, much less on time. And
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: in ninety seven the Freedom House Enterprises opened up. It
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: was a community agency. They focused on employment, trying to
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: raise employment, trying to get voting rights UM installed. And
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: this sort of dovetailed with a guy named Phil Holland,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: who was a social reformer there, and he was like,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: this is this is unacceptable that we don't have a
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: reliable ambulance service in this community and we have all
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: these guys around that people are saying aren't employable at all,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: and why don't we get them and train them up
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: and put them in these vans? Yeah, which again like
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: this isn't just some guy being like, oh, you know,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: it would be cool as if we staffed to paramedics
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: service um from members of the community to serve this
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: you know, under service community or underserved community. It's totally different.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Um the like. He also created paramedics out of out
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: of thin Air too. It was like a two part
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: creation and luckily for this whole project, there was an
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: anesthesiologists from Austria named Dr Peter Safar, who again has
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: probably made multiple appearances in some of these episodes, but
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: he's the guy basically who created the concept of civilian
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: paramedics out of thin Air. He he said, look, we
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: need to figure out how to take these life saving
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: procedures that we perform in the e er that actually
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: work and get them out into the streets and ideally
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: into the ambulances so that you're not just sitting laying
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: there hoping that you get to the e R before
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: you die, Like they're actually working on you as you're
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: making your way to the e R. So him combined
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: with this idea to create this paramedic service in the
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Hill District, combined to create the Freedom House Ambulance Service.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: And again they picked from the community, the local community
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: to serve their own community. I think this is so cool.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: All right, let's take a break, okay, and we'll be
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: back right after this. Alright. So Dr Peter Safar, Peter
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Peter Safar has said, hey, CPR is not that difficult.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: We like, we should teach people to do this stuff.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: He's like, eventually it's going to be a song called
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Staying Alive. It's gonna make it even easier. That's right. Uh,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: there was a man um there's a man named Gene
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: star Zinsky, Pittsburgh native and former paramedic, who directed a
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: documentary about ten or eleven years ago called Freedom House
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Colin Street Saviors, and he said that these, uh, these
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: guys that they got off the streets were like some
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: of them were drug addicts, some of them were veterans
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: War veterans who maybe had a little bit of medic training,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: but a lot of them were guys that were struggling
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: on the streets to get by and this was a
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: chance to to get like a real and not only
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: a job that like that actually paid a good you know,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: a decent wage, a living wage, but a job that
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: actually had a real impact on the community. Yeah. So
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: like a guy named George McCarry UM. He was twenty
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: at the time, and his grandma said, look, you either
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: need to get a job or go to school, or
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: you have to leave. You just can't. There's no free
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: ride here longer. UM. And he had heard about the
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Freedom Freedom House UM and that they were looking for
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: volunteers UM or employees I guess is what what they
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: would be called UM. And he didn't even know it
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: was for medical services. He he just knew that they
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: were looking to hire people. So he went down UH
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: and showed up and started getting trained UM. And the
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: way that he he described it as it was like
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: a real genuine ragtag group at first, but under the
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: guidance of Dr safar Um and this kind of vision
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: towards creating paramedics, like these guys were trained in life
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: saving procedures. They went from like zero to you know,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: life savers over the course of you know, basically a
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: first year Dr. Safar created a h orientation course that
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: lasted a year, required a hundred and sixty hours of
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: hands on training, took him to the Morgue to see autopsies,
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: had them basically assist in operating rooms in the E.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: R Department to give them like real world, UM experience
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: in this. Yeah, they had to train for six weeks
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: in hospitals, in the emergency room and operating rooms. I
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: see you. There was another man named John Moon as
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: another great example of someone who um really really flourished
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: in this new role. Uh. He said that he was
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: kind of turned on by the glamor of it all. Yeah. Yeah,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: I mean it was I think it was sort of
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: a I don't know, it was prestige the right word.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I got the impression big time. I think, um, John
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Moon in particular, was like he would notice like the
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: the ambulance kind of drive him by, and I get
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: the impression that the the this uh Freedom House Ambulance
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Service had a really golden reputation in the community and
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: they were kind of viewed as you know um, everyday
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: heroes in the community. So I would guess there was
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: definitely a lot of aspiration for for people or inspiration
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: maybe both. One of the bad or sad things about
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: it all is, even though there were cases where patients
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: were saved by CPR, there was one call where they
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: actually had to intubate a patient where they you know,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: put that tube down the throat to get someone breathing again. UM.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: A lot of times the emergency room was like, oh
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: my god, this is amazing that you did this, But
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of times they actually weren't welcome um, and
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: they were looked at as sort of like, you guys
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: are just drivers, You are not doctors or nurses. You
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: shouldn't be getting involved. This was and I'm not defending them,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: but this is sort of before that was a real thing.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: So I'm sure they were like, what is going on.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: You can't have these guys that you pull off the
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: street actually getting involved in our business. Yeah, and I
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: think like, um, the ambulance drivers would be like, oh,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: I'm okay, you're gonna re intubate them, and they would say, no,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: this is good. Actually it's pretty good. But that so
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: there does seem to be like, um, just like there
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: isn't like a restaurant where the back of the house
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: in the front of the house, there's always tension like that,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: or whenever somebody's stepping on somebody else's turf, like a
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: basil Brown versus the British Museum kind of thing. Um,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: there there's going to be resentment and mistreatment, especially if
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: the people are from a lower socioeconomic class or a
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: racial minority, They're gonna get mistreated. But it seems like overall,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: especially in the Hill District, these guys were viewed rightly
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: so as heroes. So as with just about any um
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: story in American history where um, Black Americans or any
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: minority groups, as they take matters into their own hands
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: and and become successful at it, I think gets taken
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: away from them and broadcast onto the larger community at
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: their expense. Usually. Yeah, And this happened in the form
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: of uh saving a boy who was hit by a bus.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: It was in a more affluent area. The ambulance was
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: called there from the Freedom House, and um they basically
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: I mean they helped us get out, They splinted his leg,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: They started in an I V word got around and
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: then these white residents in the more affluent neighborhoods were like,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: this is amazing. You know. They weren't like, wait a minute,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: why were these African Americans like treating my son. They're like,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: this is amazing. They did a great job. We want
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: our own services like that in our neighborhood to the
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Hill District shouldn't be the only one getting this. And
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: so the city of Pittsburgh said, yeah, you know what,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: you're right, we should have the citywide. We're gonna launch
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: our own service. It's it's overdue. Um. The really bad
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: part about all this, I think you probably see where
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: this is going, is it cut off the contract with
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Freedom House. They lost most of their funding because now
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: it was this big, official city program, and they had
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: the nerve to tell the Freedom House workers, hey, you
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: can still for us. You've been doing this for a
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: while now and you're super trained, but you've gotta go
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: back and get retrained by our criteria. Yeah, despite all
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: of the experience, years and years and years of experience.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, these these guys were working from and this
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: happened in ve you had to go back and retrain
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: even though you're the original paramedics that all this is
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: based on and and Freedom House losing its contract with
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: the city was a little more insidious than that. UM.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: From what I saw, there was a mayor named Joe Flaherty,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: and he always kind of balked at the idea of
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: funding Freedom House. But when he got the opportunity to,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: when UM, more affluent and more white neighborhood said they
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: want their own and they created a city wide e
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: M S Service. UM, to him, that meant seizing the
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: assets of Freedom House, freezing any funds going their way,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: and then using those funds and those assets to create
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: this larger citywide version. Rather than just increasing the funding
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: and widening the jurisdiction of Free Him House, who were
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: already good at it and knew what they were doing,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: he shut it down and started up basically a white
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: version of it. That's right, not to be confused with
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: SETV Great Joe Flaherty and and Freaks and Geeks Father
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: beloved Freaks and Geeks. Father Joe Flaherty so great, and
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: he was the crazy guy and Happy Gilmore who used
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: their heckle happy uh So the end of the Freedom
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: House was very sad, but UM some of these workers
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: did end up working for a long time and have
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: really long careers with the City of Pittsburgh and their
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: official service. John Moon, who we referenced earlier UM worked
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: for thirty five years in the e M S Department,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: eventually was assistant chief before he retired in two thousand nine.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: There was another man named Mitchell Brown. He was an
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: e MS commissioner in Cleveland, Ohio, and then ran the
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Department of Public Safety in Columbus, Ohio, all because of
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: his start at the Freedom House. An't that cool? I mean,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: these guys were just like hanging around looking for jobs,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, you know, decades later, they
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: have enough experience that they're running public safety in an
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: entire city. That's just so cool to me. Yeah, And
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: because it's so little known, Pittsburgh finally has installed a
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: couple of plaques commemorating their work UM one in the
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: actual Hill District and one in the Presbyterian University Hospital.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: And then Moon, who we mentioned um, He lobbied for
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: a long time and was finally successful in getting Freedom
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: House Medallion's placed on the side of every ambulance in
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: the city of Pittsburgh, which is pretty cool. And there
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: was there was a woman involved. Her name was Nancy Caroline.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: She took over from so far for oversight of the
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: ambulance service the Freedom House Ambulance UH in three and
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: apparently lived eight and breathed Freedom House Ambulance Services. So
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: I love it? Yeah? Uh, you got anything else? And
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: nothing else? Just Roman Mars. That's right. Well, then I
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: have one thing to say out. I like the orange one.
• 16:08
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