Wesley Posvar

Wesley Wentz Posvar (1925–2001) was the fifteenth Chancellor (1967-1991) of the University of Pittsburgh.

His administration is best known for elimination of the university's debt from its 1960s financial crisis and growing the school's prestige and endowment. Under Posvar, Pitt's operating budget grew sevenfold to $630 million and its endowment tripled to $257 million. He also established the Honors College, the School of Health-Related Professions, the University Center for International Studies, the Center for Philosophy of Science, and the University Center for Social and Urban Research.

In 2000 Pitt's Forbes Quadrangle building, on the site of the former Forbes Field, was renamed Wesley W. Posvar Hall in his honor.

He also was the founding chairman of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Posvar was born September 14, 1925 in Topeka, Kansas. He attended West Point, graduated first in his class in 1946, and after graduation he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps, which later became the U.S. Air Force. He was the first Air Force officer to win a Rhodes Scholarship, earning both a bachelor's and master's at Oxford University. At Harvard University he earned a master's in public administration and a Ph.D. in political science. Posvar achieved the Air Force rank of brigadier general.

On July 31st, 1991 Wesley W. Posvar officially retired from his post as chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh after 24 years in a career as diverse as the institution he guided for so long.

Dr. Posvar, who died July 27, 2001 at the age of 75, inherited a university that had been in such financial difficulty that it took the unusual step of changing its status from private to state-related. Besides grappling with the loss of some autonomy, the campus was dealing with the student unrest that rumbled through campuses nationwide.

It was 1967. That alone was enough to prompt more than a few university leaders to abandon the ivory tower. But Dr. Posvar, whose background was an eclectic amalgam of intellectualism, subdued radicalism and military discipline, could hardly have been better prepared for the challenge.

Pitt's stagnant budget and enrollment multiplied many times over during his tenure. Buildings that housed the law school and biomedical sciences were erected, along with Forbes Quadrangle. Also created were the School of Health Related Professions, the University Honors College, the University Center for Social and Urban Research and the College for Over 60 program. He helped bring cohesion and high regard to the university's medical programs, precursors of what is now the UPMC Health System.

It's true that much credit for academic, medical and athletic advances at the University of Pittsburgh belongs to a cadre of other administrators -- such as Dr. Thomas Detre, the psychiatrist who assembled the university's renowned medical center -- but the credit for their recruitment belongs to Dr. Posvar.

Like many another long-serving leader, Dr. Posvar had his detractors, some of whom considered him arrogant and insufficiently collegial. Resentment came to a head at the end of his tenure, when it was discovered that a multimillion-dollar retirement package had been negotiated for him at a time when he was being sought by other institutions. Amid the controversy over the plan, Dr. Posvar decided to forgo some of the benefits.

Whatever one thought of that controversy or others, they cannot obscure Wesley Posvar's crucial role in the re-invention of the University of Pittsburgh as one of America's leading state-supported universities. In recognition of that accomplishment, Dr. Posvar was named president emeritus of Pitt in 1993. Last year the Forbes Quadrangle was renamed Posvar Hall to recognize his many contributions to the university.

It was an appropriate honor for the former fighter pilot, Rhodes Scholar and political scientist. His really lasting monument, however, is the institution he did so much to shape.

He died of a heart attack on July 27, 2001. He was buried with full military honors at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

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"'Posvar eulogized as 'agent for social change"""Pitt ex-chancellor broke down racial and social barriers"Wednesday, August 01, 2001

By Bill Schackner, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

His grandson called him "a titan."

An academic dean at the University of Pittsburgh marveled at this "renaissance man for the ages."

But some of the 450 people who mourned Wesley Posvar said the truest measure of his success lay not in such tributes, or even in what he did for the university he helped to rescue. Rather, it was his passion for breaking down racial and social barriers that set Pitt's 15th chancellor apart.

"When all is said and done, Wesley Wentz Posvar would probably best wish to be remembered not as a Rhodes Scholar, a brigadier general or a distinguished chancellor of a renowned university," said the Rev. Harold T. Lewis, rector of the Calvary Episcopal Church in Shadyside, who delivered the funeral sermon for a man who was all of those things.

Rather, Lewis said, Posvar would want to be known as "an agent for social change." That was true, he said, whether it was listening to student demonstrators in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s or seeing to it that blacks and other minorities on campus received equal treatment.

"He was a genius who never lost the common touch," Lewis said. "He was, as a friend has described him, a fighter pilot trapped in the body of a scholar."

So it went for 90 minutes in a service that touched the two worlds in which Posvar lived. There was an Air Force honor guard and a rendition of Pitt's alma mater. There was talk of Posvar's days at West Point and of how he infused his own passion for international studies and racial equity into the campus he led for 24 years.

It was a litany of achievement that would have made Posvar proud, if a bit impatient. After all, some of the mourners said afterward, the former chancellor always preferred brevity.

The 95-year-old church where Posvar worshipped is just up the road from Pitt. Among those who crowded into its oak pews and endured near 90-degree heat were county Chief Executive Jim Roddey, a former campus trustee, and former Pitt football coach Johnny Majors, who was hired by Posvar and coached the school's football team to a national championship three years later in 1976.

Roddey and others paid their respects to Posvar's family, including Mildred, his wife of 51 years, who dabbed at tears and embraced those who passed her front row seat.

"There's no way to explain what he meant to me and my family and my life," Majors said outside the church. "I've never had a greater leader that I had more respect for."

Roddey recalled years of contributions by Posvar and said he had an extraordinary grasp of the challenges facing the Pittsburgh region. He had just asked Posvar last week to serve on a panel to get more air cargo into the region.

"We will miss you, general. We will miss you, chancellor," Roddey said. "We will miss you, old friend."

Posvar was a combat pilot in Vietnam and a Pentagon planner who rose through the Air Force ranks to become a brigadier general. He died at the age of 75 Friday of a heart attack after swimming with his grandchildren at a pool at the Rolling Rock Club in Westmoreland County.

As the second longest-serving chancellor in Pitt's history, Posvar is credited with transforming a struggling regional school. When Posvar arrived from the Air Force in 1967, the school was so deep in debt it had sought a state bailout and agreed to become public.

By the time he left in 1991, it had become a nationally known center for research and offered a range of programs started under Posvar, from its Center for International Studies to its honors college and to various endeavors in its vast medical hub.

Shortly before yesterday's service began, a six-member honor guard from Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., lifted the flag-draped casket bearing Posvar's body and carried it into the Indiana limestone church. Standing behind them in silence were honorary pallbearers, including seven Posvar grandchildren, among them Wesley Fishwick Posvar, 17, who composed a poem titled "Granddaddy."

"You knew everything about the sun, moon and stars and far away lands," the poem read in part. "Even at 75 your mind was full of energy and youth. Nobody was more down to earth.

"I salute you."

David Epperson, who is retiring after 29 years as dean of Pitt's social work school, said Posvar believed that the university could not achieve its potential without becoming more diverse.

"He began appointing people of color in areas where there had never been any," he said. "Three academic deans, vice chancellor for student affairs, vice provost who later became the provost, director of public safety, director of the band, assistant athletic director and the first endowed chair, who was a Mellon Professor."

Lewis, in his sermon, recalled being told by a black faculty member about the time Posvar was offered membership in an organization that did not allow blacks as members.

"He refused to join under such circumstances and proposed to his black colleague that they should be proposed for membership together," Lewis said. "Yet again, Posvar pushed the envelope; yet again he flew in the face of convention; yet again he challenged the mores of a town that for so long had missed the boat when it came to race relations.

"And yet again, Wesley Wentz Posvar prevailed."

Both the former chancellor and the faculty member were admitted.

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References

*cite book | author=Alberts, Robert C. | title=Pitt: The Story of the University of Pittsburgh 1787-1987 | location=Pittsburgh | publisher=University of Pittsburgh Press | year=1987 | id=ISBN 0-8229-1150-7

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