The tale of CMU donor William Dietrich centers on family and education
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William S. Dietrich II, 73, joins in a group photograph during Wednesday's ceremonies at Carnegie Mellon University. -
William S. Dietrich II, center, is greeted by Raymond Lane, chairman of Carnegie Mellon University's board of trustees, as his daughter, Anna Elizabeth Diemer, of San Francisco, smiles at left.
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Bill Dietrich sometimes watched his mother make three breakfasts for his father, who let each one go cold on the coffee table as he worked furiously on his company's finances.
Her devotion also saved her son from the principal when he exploded a firecracker in a pencil sharpener and later in life helped keep his dreams alive about jumping from rural Conneaut Lake High School to Princeton University.
The philanthropist and former steel executive reminded a crowd at Carnegie Mellon University Wednesday, upon announcing his gift of $265 million to the university, and its naming its College of Humanities and Social Sciences after his mother, that one's school is called "alma mater" -- Latin for "nurturing mother" -- for good reason.
"Underpinning all our achievements and accomplishments is a simple sense of being loved," he said. "It's that feeling of security that allows us to take the risk, dream the dream and dare to live life with the courage that is forged by nurturing and abiding care."
Mr. Dietrich's gift is one of the 10 largest ever by an individual to higher education in the United States, university officials said.
William S. Dietrich II, 73, was born May 13, 1938, in Pittsburgh to Kenneth and Marianna Brown Dietrich, who had met while students at Thiel College in Greenville.
His father -- a ukelele-playing card player and salesman -- worked in the chemical industry before moving the family to Conneaut Lake in 1947 to run a small hotel. Bill Dietrich graduated from high school there in 1955.
In 1959, his father started a small lumber company near Blairsville, which would become Dietrich Industries, a steel distribution and products company. A year after graduating from Princeton in 1960, the young Dietrich came back to work for the firm, taking over its day-to-day operations a few years later and transforming it into the country's largest manufacturer of light steel framing for construction, with 19 plants in 17 states employing more than 1,800 people.
In 1978, he decided to return to school, enrolling at Pitt and earning his Ph.D. in political science six years later. In the late 1980s, he began working on the manuscript for the book "In the Shadow of the Rising Sun: The Political Roots of American Economic Decline," a protectionist warning about Japan's growing economic power, researching and writing from 5 to 8 a.m. before putting in a full day of work at his office.
First Published September 8, 2011 12:00 am
