Freddie Fu once said, “I practice medicine with unconditional love.” His love has been felt far and wide. Shown above: With the Freddie Fu Cycling Team at the start of the Pittsburgh Marathon (for which he was also a catalyst) in 2018.

Thousands of paper citations, thousands of mentees, even more thousands of patients. It’s hard to quantify the influence of the late Freddie Fu (MD ’77, Res ’82) but we’ve tried for years.

Here at Pitt Med magazine, we loved writing about him and could have reported on his latest accomplishments in every issue—but we paced ourselves. The truth is, we couldn’t possibly keep up.

He changed orthopaedic practice, so he was sought out. This renaissance MD repaired the anatomies of ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov and five-time Tour de France winner Miguel Indurain. (At one point, Fu himself rode about 100 miles a week and sponsored a professional team—the Freddie Fu Cycling Team of the Allegheny Cycling Association.)

He healed plenty of Pittsburghers, too: steel workers, weekend warriors, high school athletes. He was known to do as many as 12 procedures a day and would help clean up in between to save time.

Along the way, Fu and his team examined a grizzly, a tiger, a mandrill and a lemur. The motivations for the zoo patients were largely scientific, but no one was left out with Freddie. He was a healer and friend to all.