Mt. Lebanon couple donates $1 million to UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital Research Institute

Terri Bone remembered calling the neonatal intensive care unit from her hospital room to check on her newborn daughter.

“The nurse told me, ‘she stopped breathing last night, but she is OK,’ ” said Bone. “ ‘Premature babies do that sometimes.’ ”

After 10 days in the NICU at what is now UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital, baby Megan went home.

Now, 29, Megan is a pediatric neurologist in Texas. As a University of Pittsburgh medical student, she spent time in 2017 in that very same NICU where she was born five weeks early at 6 pounds.

Terri Bone and her husband, Tom Bone, last month donated $1 million to Magee-Womens Research Institute for UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit in Oakland. The Bones, who live in Mt. Lebanon, are each retired from senior positions in finance; Terri was chief accounting officer for EQT Corp. and Tom was a vice president for tax at Crown Castle, the cell tower operator.

“This is money we saved and we want to give it as a gift,” said Terri Bone, who now applies her financial acumen as a leader at The 25 Club at Magee, which supports newborn medicine, neonatal research and fetal interventions. “I never thought a healthy person like me could have pregnancy complications. There needs to be more research into why these things happen.”

When Terri Bone was about to have her third child, she was put on bed rest.

Her son Tim, now 25, was born three weeks early. His lungs weren’t fully developed. Tim’s aorta collapsed and he wasn’t getting oxygen between his lungs and his heart. He was 6 pounds, 7 ounces.

“In the delivery room, they took him away immediately,” Terri Bone said. “Later, they told me they resuscitated him three times.”

When the baby was strong enough to leave the hospital, the neonatal doctor carried him to the car. Terri Bone was later told that the doctors had worried at one point that Tim might not survive.

“You think you are going to have a baby and everything is going to be fine,” said Terri Bone, who wasn’t prepared for either medical situation. Her first child, Patrick, now 31, was born with no complications at a healthy birth weight, though he arrived three weeks early “It’s very unsettling. Magee did a marvelous job with our babies. That’s why we want to give back.”

The funding of research that focuses on women’s health and prematurity is a milestone worth celebrating, said Michael Annichine, the research institute’s president and chief executive officer.

Magee-Womens Research Institute & Foundation is the largest research institute in the U.S. devoted to women’s and infants’ health. It is a community of researchers from Pitt and physician-scientists and clinicians at UPMC.

It reports that nearly 1 in 10 babies are born prematurely each year in the United States. Those born before 37 weeks can be susceptible to long-term health problems. In about 50% of the prematurity cases, the cause is not known.

The best approach to reducing prematurity is prevention, said Dr. Yoel Sadovsky, executive director of the research institute. Nearly a third of premature babies are born early when their birth is induced by doctors for medical indications, he said, such as preeclampsia, fetal growth restriction and diseases of the placenta.

“All of these conditions are targets of MWRI research, with the goal of markedly reducing the incidence of prematurity,” he said.

He added there is need for better research exploring major complications of preterm newborns, including respiratory distress, brain hemorrhage, gut perforations and severe infections.

It wasn’t until years later that Terri Bone made the connection. When she born in 1963, she was premature, as was her grandmother in 1917. She said she had heard the story of people carrying her grandmother around on a pillow at 2 pounds.

She said women often don’t talk about childbirth.

“Women need to be comfortable telling their own stories to make sure their kids, families and doctors know the important aspects of their health,” Terri Bone said. “This is our way to help move research forward. We want Pittsburgh to know the city has a fabulous world class research right here.”

Terri Bone said they chose now because it’s the season of giving and to honor the memory of her father Frank Zagrobelny, who died in September.

“We learn the importance of caring for others from our parents who care for us,” said Bone, who in 2013 joined the board for Magee Womens Institute. “Children carry on their parents’ legacy.”