Harry Nurkin, who as an energetic hospital administrator transformed the ailing Charlotte Memorial Hospital into the regional juggernaut known as Carolinas HealthCare System, died Thursday of pancreatic cancer. He was 67.

Nurkin's wife, Libby, announced his death on their CaringBridge website. He was diagnosed in August with cancer that had spread to his liver. He died at Carolinas Medical Center, his home away from home.

"It is almost poetic," Libby Nurkin wrote on the website, "that Harry Nurkin built CMC and CHS into the most dynamic medical center in the Southeast and this is where he spent his last days. He was not alone, and his family surrounded him with love."

During nearly 22 years as CEO, Nurkin and his team built a two-state network of hospitals, nursing homes, physician practices and other health-care facilities. The campus of what is now Carolinas Medical Center expanded to include a heart institute and an 11-story tower with all-private patient rooms.

When he took the job, Nurkin oversaw a hospital with 3,400 employees and a $76 million budget. When he retired in 2002, the system had multiple hospitals with 27,000 employees and a budget of $2.6 billion.

"He had a vision to transform health care in our region," said James Hynes, current chairman of the system board. "Carolinas HealthCare System as you see it today ... started with his vision.

"We went from being Charlotte-oriented to being Carolinas-oriented," Hynes said. "He recruited a significant staff, most of whom are still there carrying out the vision."

Dr. Francis Robicsek, a longtime Charlotte heart surgeon, praised Nurkin for recognizing "the potential of Charlotte Memorial. He planted a tree which grew into a forest."

'Doing all the work'

A Durham native and Duke University graduate, Nurkin was the second of three children. He was 3 when his father, a salesman, died of diphtheria. His mother supported the family by selling dresses in a downtown Durham store, according to the institutional history, "A Great, Public Compassion," written by former Observer writer Jerry Shinn.

As a Duke undergraduate, Nurkin worked as a ward clerk at Duke Hospital. He completed Duke's graduate program in hospital administration and moved to Memphis in 1968 to work as administrative assistant at Baptist Memorial Hospital, where hospital president Frank Groner taught Nurkin to run hospitals as a business.

Groner's hospital was one of the first to have a computer and an adjacent doctors' office building. It also had carpet, plants and lots of windows.

In 1974, Nurkin became associate administrator of the 862-bed University of Alabama Hospitals in Birmingham. That's where he was when he came to the attention of Charlotte hospital officials searching for a new administrator.

Stuart Dickson, then chairman of the Charlotte Memorial board, recalled that Nurkin was the No. 2 man at the Birmingham hospital but he was "doing all the work."

Building an empire

Nurkin was 37 when he arrived in Charlotte in 1981 to lead Charlotte Memorial. Perceived as the county's hospital for the poor, Memorial was suffering from high employee turnover, physical disrepair and a second-rate reputation.

With the board's backing, Nurkin quickly employed the lessons he'd learned from his mentors. He tightened financial practices and upgraded the hospital's look and feel.

"He walked the halls of the hospital at all hours of the day and night, stopping to talk with people, listening to their concerns, encouraging them to call him by his first name," Shinn wrote in the hospital history.

Memorial was losing $300,000 annually when Nurkin arrived. He vigorously collected unpaid bills and cut spending. Some people were fired, and merit pay replaced across-the-board raises.

By 1983, he produced the hospital's first long-range plan, with a bold vision for a major medical center with a heart institute, a doctors' office building and a bed tower to replace the hospital's 1940 wing - all things that would come to pass.

Both friends and enemies called him a "visionary." But he was also accused of empire building. He ruffled feathers in the polite Charlotte health-care community.

For example, in 1985, after visiting the new heart center at Presbyterian Hospital, Nurkin complained to state officials that Presbyterian had committed "several substantial and blatant violations" by building a larger center than the state had approved.

State officials fined Presbyterian but let the hospital seek retroactive approval for the construction. Presbyterian officials resented what they saw as Nurkin's go-for-the-throat style. Relationships have improved over the years, but that clash set the tone for fierce competition that continues.

On Friday, Paul Wiles, CEO of Novant Health, Presbyterian's parent company, praised Nurkin as "a giant in our industry and an extraordinarily good competitor who worked on behalf of his patients and his organization."

"This is a sad day," Wiles said. "I have always had the utmost respect for Harry."

Early retirement

In 2002, Nurkin unexpectedly announced early retirement in a letter to Carolinas HealthCare board members and employees. He didn't give a reason.

Subsequently, Nurkin served as executive-in-residence and director of the executive master's degree program in health administration at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he had earlier received his doctorate. He also served as a health-care consultant in recent years.

In 2004, Nurkin and his wife of 36 years, Jarleth Nurkin, divorced, and he married Elizabeth "Libby" Heath Drury, former chief legal counsel for Carolinas HealthCare and now an attorney for Mecklenburg County's mental health authority. She and Nurkin left the hospital system at about the same time in 2002.

On CaringBridge, Harry Nurkin wrote frequently about his supportive wife. "I am the luckiest man alive," he wrote in a "Love Letter to Libby" on Sept. 11. He described her as "the love of my life."

In his final CaringBridge post Oct. 5, he thanked friends and family who reached out during his illness.

"Everyone who has travelled this journey knows there are ups and downs ... Took a dramatic turn today and was readmitted to Carolinas Medical Center ... Right now I am feeling pretty well. I hope (treatment and) rest will head me back in the right direction."

In addition to his wife, Nurkin is survived by five sons, Matthew, Brad, Scott, Christopher and Alex; two stepdaughters, Eliza Brenkus and Lane Drury; and four grandchildren.

Visitation is from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Hankins & Whittington funeral home, 1111 East Blvd. Services will be at 2 p.m. Monday at Bethel Presbyterian Church, 19920 Bethel Church Road, Cornelius.