Emeritus senior vice chancellor dies at 86

Thomas P. Detre, the man largely credited with piloting UPMC to international prominence through… Thomas P. Detre, the man largely credited with piloting UPMC to international prominence through innovative funding and research strategies, died Saturday in his home after a long illness. He was 86.

Detre served as Pitt’s senior vice chancellor for the health sciences between 1975 and 1998. During that time, many in Pitt’s administration considered him to be a driving force behind Pitt’s success as a major research institution.

In a statement issued Saturday by UPMC, Pitt Chancellor Mark Nordenberg said Detre was “the most accomplished academic leader I have known … and it was a great privilege to work with and learn from him.”

“Dr. Detre’s leadership in bringing world-class medicine and pioneering research to western Pennsylvania transformed the character and culture of this region,” Nordenberg said. “He was a man beloved for his kindness, compassion, wit and old-world charm.”

Detre began his career at Pitt after leaving a tenured position at Yale to become a director at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, and the University granted him emeritus status as a senior vice chancellor in 2004.

Before coming to Pitt, Detre attended medical school in Rome after immigrating there from Hungary. When he graduated he set up a small practice in the city before moving to the United States. He redid his residency at a New York hospital and joined Yale’s faculty.

One of the reasons Detre moved to the United States was that “he couldn’t work hard enough in Italy,” his son John Detre said.

“He had two or three positions in Rome, but he couldn’t really fulfill his ambitions there,” John Detre said. “He wasn’t a guy who spent Sundays throwing a baseball in the back yard, that’s for sure.”

During his years at Pitt, Detre attracted a number of accomplished physicians and researchers to Western Psych.

Together, Thomas Detre and fellow administrators reorganized the research funding structure of UPMC. They did this by driving funding from clinical practice into research, using the research findings to improve the clinical practice and attracting more patients and researchers.

Dr. Arthur Levine, who took over as senior vice chancellor in 1998, recalled Detre’s skill at guiding Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic.

“[Detre] brought WPIC into the modern era of biological psychiatry … encouraging interdisciplinary efforts and high standards of scholarship that became and continue to be the foundation of our exceptional growth and achievement,” Levine said in a release.

John Detre described his father as an extremely well dressed man who loved espresso a“Anyone who knew him well knew he loved coffee. He used to drink like 20 cups of espresso a day, and smoking was certainly a big hobby of his,” John Detre said. “He was also know for his dress. I think a lot of medical professionals at Pitt and UPMC dress the way they do because of him — always a jacket and tie.”

Ellen Ormond, Thomas Detre’s second wife, also described his personal life.

“I got to know Thomas after his first wife died in 2006, and we married in 2008,” she said. “In that time he was a truly remarkable person. He retired from his work incredibly gracefully and really made transitions well.”

Ormond said Detre was always humble about his professional successes.

“He never thought about the past very much, and he was not very interested in gathering accolades for his past accomplishments,” she said. “His success pleased him immensely obviously, but he always most enjoyed whatever he was doing next.”