Walt Bielich, Pitt Varsity Letter Club executive director for more than 20 years and a Pitt football letterman, died March 6, 2024 at 94.
“Walt was so successful in putting this together,” says Sam Clancy, the Varsity Letter Club’s current head. “There was no better person to me than Walt Bielich. He was a guy I tried to pattern myself after. I knew how much he cared about the University. Walt and his generation were so proud to be from the University of Pittsburgh and they would give back.”
Bielich was instrumental, with storied Pitt football coach Jock Sutherland, in creating the Awardees of Distinction Dinner in 1961, which recognizes athletic alumni who have impacted their profession and community through their degree. Bielich also helped raise more than a million dollars to fund Pitt’s George I. Carson Graduate Fellowship for recent Pitt undergraduates who excelled here in academics and athletics.
“He was the best,” Clancy says. “He taught me that the job is getting to know everybody.” When Clancy first started, he recalls, he would call Bielich as many as three times a week to ask, “‘How did you guys do it?’
“I interacted with seven decades of alumni because of Walt Bielich. Walt brought all those guys back into the University. He was just the best human being you want to be around. He made me feel like I was part of his family and he felt like he was a part of my family.”
Bielich grew up on Pittsburgh’s South Side slopes, playing football and basketball at South High School with the class of 1948.
Before completing his undergraduate degree, Bielich served three years in the Marine Corps during the Korean War. He graduated from Pitt in 1955 with a bachelor's degree in economics, then earned a master's degree here, also in economics, in 1957.
While an undergraduate, Bielich lettered twice in football (1954-55).
Bielich joined the Panthers’ athletic department as an assistant director of development in 1987 and was instrumental in forming the department's national alumni network as head of the Pitt Varsity Letter Club. After more than two decades with Pitt Athletics, he retired from his formal role but continued his personal support as a fan and Club committee member.
The Varsity Letter Club was essentially his second career, begun a year after he retired from the U.S. Steel Corporation. As a third-generation steelworker, he had risen from melter foreman at the U.S. Steel Homestead Works to assistant to the general superintendent of the plant after 23 years. He also was manager of several company plants in Indiana before working for 10 more years as a company consultant in Eastern Europe, assessing facilities there for possible purchase by U.S. Steel.
He also served as a councilman for Bethel Park Ward 4 and with the Bethel Park Democratic Committee.
He was married to the former Hope Mervosh (a graduate of Pitt's School of Education) for 62 years until her passing in 2015. They endowed a scholarship in Hope’s name that is awarded to a senior Pitt volleyball player each year.
He is survived by sons John Bielich (Mary Pat Lackner) and Steven Bielich; daughters Norma Bielich and Mary Bielich (Matt Tuite); granddaughters Meghan Bielich and Bridget Bielich; grandsons Steven Bielich (Jacqueline Coles) and Johnny Bielich; great-grandchildren Vivian Bielich, Harrison Bielich and Quentin Bielich; and sister Marlene (Bielich) Alexoff (the late Carl Alexoff).
Memorial gifts are suggested to the Hope Mervosh Bielich women’s volleyball scholarship, payable to the University of Pittsburgh Department of Athletics, PO Box 7436, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213.
— Marty Levine