He was an associate editor at the Institute of Early American History and Culture in Williamsburg, Virginia before going to the University of Pittsburgh in 1961.
He served on the boards of Mendelssohn Choir, the Pittsburgh Dance Council, and Winchester Thurston School.
Annual publications included volumes in Milton Studies and Cuban Studies and the winners of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, the AWP Award Series in Poetry, and the Drue Heinz Literature Prize.
One of Hetzel's greatest publishing success stories was in 1976 when the University of Pittsburgh Press reissued Thomas Bell's Out of This Furnace to wide acclaim.
Hetzel died at age 73 on September 13, 2003, at his Squirrel Hill home in Pittsburgh and is buried at Homewood Cemetery.