Bolstered health care access to underserved communities
Thomas McCants was a visionary and a trailblazer with the character to back up his gold-plated reputation.
He was credited with expanding family medicine practices throughout underserved local communities and increasing the number of family practice residents by more than 60% at UPMC St. Margaret, where Mr. McCants was an award-winning administrator.
He was also a decorated Vietnam War veteran and philanthropist who steered the former Lemington Home for the Aged through funding challenges.
And, Mr. McCants proved to be a pioneer in other ways, too.
“He was, we believe, the first African-American hospital administrator in Western Pennsylvania,” said his daughter Tracey McCants Lewis, vice president of human resources and deputy general counsel for the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Mr. McCants died March 28 of complications from dementia, surrounded by his family at the North Side home of his sister Carole McCants. He was 78.
His loss was particularly poignant for his old friend and colleague Dr. Donald Middleton, who worked alongside Mr. McCants for many years at the UPMC St. Margaret Family Medicine Residency Program.
“When I heard that he died, I cried,” said Dr. Middleton, retired director of the residency program and currently a professor of family medicine at UPMC. “When Tom said he would do something, he would do it. He was a good man.”
One of six siblings to parents who came to the North Side during the Great Migration, Mr. McCants developed a tenacious work ethic from an early age.
“He was a bright, hardworking child,” said his daughter, of Brighton Heights. “Legend has it that he worked in a newspaper stand with my grandmother early in the morning every day from the age of 5 until he was 18.”
A gifted trombone player and member of the National Honor Society, Mr. McCants excelled in his studies and found a passion for football in high school.
“He really wanted to play football, but my grandmother protected him so he never played until high school,” his daughter said.
A standout right tackle — with the physique to match — Mr. McCants’ 6-foot-4 broad- shouldered frame could be intimidating.
It scared away many potential suitors, until he flashed his one-of-a-kind, disarming smile, Ms. McCants Lewis recalled.
“He was imposing and he had this big, booming voice,” she said. “But he had a heart of gold and a wicked sense of humor. He was so quick- witted — he just couldn’t hold it back. He had these dimples and when you would see the dimples starting, you knew something was coming.”
Mr. McCants played football for Allegheny High School, being named among the 17 Most Valuable Players in 1960 by The Pittsburgh Press.
The same year, Mr. McCants began dating Francine Ruth White, a former neighbor who he reconnected with in high school.
They attended their senior prom and graduated together in 1961.
The couple married five years later, in August 1966. Mrs. McCants, a retired obstetrics nurse at UPMC Magee, died in November.
Mr. McCants earned a footballand academic scholarship to Colorado State University, where he studied veterinary medicine and joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps.
It was his career as an Army captain during the Vietnam War that changed the trajectory of Mr. McCants’ career, his daughter said.
“He was in a medic unit, and he got experience with the administrative side,” she said. “He did not talk about Vietnam at all with us. But, hearing stories from old friends and reading discharge papers, I think that’s what really turned him on to that field and the public health aspects of it.”
Mr. McCants was recognized with several medals, including the Bronze Star and Army Commendation Medal.
After his tour in Vietnam, Mr. McCants served at various Army bases in Texas, New Jersey and Kentucky, where he worked as an Army medical registrar, helping to prepare and preserve patient records.
By 1971, he and his wife moved to Monroeville, and Mr. McCants earned a master’s degree at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.
During his nearly 30-year career at UPMC St. Margaret, Mr. McCants served in several executive positions, including vice president of administration.
“When Tom became an executive at St. Margaret, he was put in charge of medical education,” Dr. Middleton recalled. “At that time, we had eight residents per year in the family practice residency program. When he finished, there were 13 residents per year. There were so many advances made under his guidance and the residency program grew to become one of the largest in the country. All of that came under Tom’s leadership.”
Mr. McCants served as a valuable partner in the administration, he said, helping to smooth the way and secure funding for new initiatives and organizing outreach efforts.
“We worked together to open a health center for the community in Lincoln/Lemington and we did things like getting a mobile van to deliver health care to housing communities,” Dr. Middleton said.
In 1977, Mr. McCants was named outstanding citizen by the Allegheny County Medical Society for founding the Deer Lakes Family Health Center in West Deer.
Previously, there was only one doctor serving about 13,000 residents in the area. Mr. McCants recognized the problem when he was working on a long-range development plan for St. Margaret that included an expansion of family health care services in rural and medically underserved communities.
“The outreach efforts were a pretty big deal,” Dr. Middleton recalled. “We’d go to him with our ideas and he would say, ‘Sounds good to me. Let’s make it happen.’ He also had a very analytical head on his shoulders and he saw the necessity for improving training and went out and found the money for us so we could do that.”
Mr. McCants helped to establish a similar practice in Garfield that combined medical with dental services.
“That was a little revolutionary, in that they put the medical and dental together,” his daughter said. “He was extremely proud of those health centers.”
As chairman of the board at Lemington Home for the Aged in the 1980s, Mr. McCants contributed his considerable skill at bringing people from different walks of life together to work for a common cause, his daughter said.
“There was a call for organizations and the community to come together and help financially,” she said.
His friend’s impact will be felt for many years to come, Dr. Middleton said, from the children and grandchildren he doted on to the medical professionals and others he worked with for so many years.
“I’ve been doing this for 43 years and I know a lot of people — Tom McCants was an honest, friendly, warmhearted, real man,” he said. “When I told some of the old faculty about his passing, they — to a person — sent me notes expressing what a good man he was.”
Along with his sister and daughter, Mr. McCants is survived by his other daughter Bari Williams, of Monroeville; his sister Annette Green, of the North Side; and four grandchildren.
His funeral was Saturday.