Pitt-Bradford to Dedicate Chapel Thursday

The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford will dedicate the Harriett B. Wick Chapel in a ceremony at 4 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 30.

The celebration is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will follow.

“It has been a dream of the university for quite some time to have a chapel on campus,” said Dr. Livingston Alexander, president. “The Wick Chapel will fill an important need on our campus in providing a place where students of any religious denomination can worship in a manner consistent with his or her preference.”

In addition to Alexander, other speakers at the ceremony include the Rev. Leo J. Gallina Jr., pastor of St. Bernard Catholic Church; Rick Weinberg ’94 of Temple Beth El; Dr. Patricia Beeson, provost and senior vice chancellor; Craig A. Hartburg ’73-’75, chairman of the Pitt-Bradford Advisory Board; Howard L. Fesenmyer, member of the Advisory Board Executive Committee; Dr. Gautam Mukerjee, associate professor of economics; and Erik Austin, vice president of Student Government Association.

Work on the $2.5 million building began last fall.

The 150-seat interfaith chapel was designed by Albert Filoni, president of MacLachlan, Cornelius and Filoni Architects.

The building, Filoni said, is designed to serve “a whole lot of people in a whole lot of ways. It really is not a church. It is a whole lot more than that.”

In addition to providing a place for religious services of all types, the building will be used as a center for service learning and for receptions, induction ceremonies, small choral and musical performances, recitals, readings and speakers.

The chapel is being dedicated in honor of longtime Pitt-Bradford benefactor Harriett B. Wick.

Wick retired from Zippo Manufacturing Co. in 1994 after 44 years of service to the company founded by her father, George G. Blaisdell. She served as vice president and secretary of the company from 1978 until 1994 and sold her share of the company to her sister and her sister’s sons in 1999.

She also served on the board of the Philo and Sarah Blaisdell Foundation, which was also founded by her father. The Blaisdell Foundation was one of the first organizations to begin supporting Pitt-Bradford through scholarships.

Wick and her sister, Sarah Dorn, have a long history of supporting the university in addition to their leadership for the Blaisdell Foundations. Wick and Dorn established two scholarship funds at Pitt-Bradford, to honor their mother, Miriam Barcroft Blaisdell.

In 1995, Wick and other members of the Blaisdell family made a $1.5 million challenge gift to Pitt-Bradford to be used toward the construction of Blaisdell Hall.

In 1993, Wick received the Presidential Medal of Distinction from Pitt-Bradford and, in 2005, she was inducted into Pitt’s Cathedral of Learning Society.