When Assistant EMS Chief John Moon started driving an ambulance in 1972, he was one of a few dozen medics, almost all African-American, in a pioneering program to bring jobs and better health care to an inner-city neighborhood.

When he retires at the end of this month as part of a settlement of a civil suit alleging racial discrimination against him as an African-American, he'll be leaving a city of Pittsburgh Emergency Medical Services Bureau that, in his view, has strayed too far from its roots.

The bureau "to this day, despite my efforts, fails to acknowledge its foundation, which is the Freedom House ambulance service," he said.

After decades of pushing for diversity in a bureau that became steadily whiter even as he rose through its ranks, his one regret is leaving the job undone. "I've gone as far as I can go with the current regime," he said.

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's administration argues that it is doing what it can to bring more diversity into EMS and into the other public safety bureaus. It now offers paid paramedic training, which has helped it boost minority hiring -- zero from 2000 through 2007 -- to 45 percent of EMS hires in the last two years.

That's a program Mr. Moon fought for, even as he was battling upper management to advance his own career. Will diversity efforts continue? "I seriously do not believe that that's in the heart of the department," he said.

Mr. Moon, 60, grew up in the Hill District's Colwell Street and took a job as a hospital orderly. At work, he chafed at restrictions that kept orderlies from providing patient care. At home, he watched the ambulances of Freedom House -- a private entity funded in part by the federal government -- deliver the sick and injured of the Hill, Oakland and Downtown to hospitals.

He got medic training at the North Park Fire Academy and joined Freedom House.

At the time, people in need of trips to the hospital could call the police, call a taxi, or hunt for a private ambulance service that would first check their insurance coverage. Freedom House was an experiment in neighborhood self-sufficiency and pre-hospital care that eventually inspired Mayor Pete Flaherty -- and then others nationally -- to start city ambulance services.

The city's service, launched in 1975, swallowed Freedom House's equipment and personnel. But over the course of a year of what Mr. Moon characterized as grueling training and testing, about 20 of the 30 Freedom House medics were "weeded out" of the new city department.

"For all the good that [Mr. Flaherty] did, he did not have the vision to see that Freedom House, as the very first community-based emergency medical service, could also become a vehicle for diversifying the city's public safety work force," said Allegheny County Councilman William Robinson, who has worked with Mr. Moon on diversity issues.

New hires came mostly from suburban and rural services, and were white. Neighborhood kids who wanted to become medics couldn't because they needed a sponsoring organization to get into training programs.

"Up until 1989 or '90, the number of African-Americans in the department dwindled down to six," Mr. Moon said.

He worked with Mr. Robinson, then a state represntative, to eliminate the rule requiring sponsors for medic trainees, and the Community College of Allegheny County developed into a key supplier of new medics.

"Community College became a vehicle for us," said Mr. Robinson, now vice chairman of the CCAC board.

There was an early-90s surge in minority recruitment, then nothing. Mr. Moon said the bureau went a decade without hiring an African-American.

He advanced his own career -- to a point.

In 1977, he noticed that he and other black employees weren't being promoted. He complained, and got the next available supervisory job. He then rose to the level of chief supervisor and thought he would be assistant chief.

"I hit that glass ceiling," he said, when Mark Bocian, who is white, leap-frogged him in rank and got the assistant chief's job. In a move he came to view as a consolation prize, he was later given the title of co-assistant chief, but felt marginalized as Mr. Bocian got the tasks likely to prepare him for further promotion.

In 2005, after Robert McCaughan moved up from deputy chief to chief, Mr. Bocian rose to deputy. Mr. Moon sued in the Court of Common Pleas in July 2007, alleging that he was given only perfunctory consideration for the job, that Chief McCaughan kept "secret files" to thwart his career moves, and that bureau promotions were race-based.

About the same time, he applied for Chief McCaughan's job after Mr. Ravenstahl asked for resignation letters from most top city administrators. The mayor kept Chief McCaughan.

"Life was not grand," Mr. Moon said. He was "ostracized. A lot of duties and responsibilities were taken away from me. Humiliation, embarrassment. Wondering why it happened.

"I was relegated to the role of teaching CPR and taking complaints, [after being] a person who had managed the day-to-day operations of the department."

The city said in court filings that Mr. Bocian was a better employee and prepared a list of 28 witnesses for a trial that was set to start a week ago. On the Friday before trial, though, the parties settled under terms they have not released.

Not long before he sued, Mr. Moon got the city to launch the EMT/P 365 Trainee Program, under which it pays recruits while they train to be certified paramedics. It has helped lead to eight minority hires, according to the administration.

An administration count puts the bureau's roster at 16 percent minority -- up from 13 percent in 2007. The Fraternal Association of Professional Paramedics provided a count indicating the bureau is still 13 percent minority.

The paid training effort is "a great program, and John Moon helped to get that program started," said Tony Weinmann, president of the paramedics union local.

"We hold John very highly," he said. "He's a dedicated professional. The union worked very well with him."

Administration members and Chief McCaughan declined comment on Mr. Moon because the lawsuit settlement is not finalized.

With Mr. Moon's departure, just two Freedom House veterans will remain in the bureau -- paramedic Darnella Wilson and District Chief Ervin Davis.

Mr. Moon said he'll miss the stress of emergency medicine.

"To suddenly wake up at the end of the month and find out that I no longer have that is going to be tough."

And Mr. Robinson predicted that it might be some time before the impact of Mr. Moon's contributions is realized.

"I think that probably John had no idea, when he was working for Freedom House, the national implications of what he and his colleagues were doing in terms of providing a vehicle for people who wanted to get involved in emergency medical services."

Looking for more from the Post-Gazette? Join PG+, our members-only web site. You'll get exclusive sports content, opinion, financial information, discounts from retailers and restaurants, and more. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.