On Aug. 26, the University of 
Michigan turned 200 years 
old.
One 
week 
later, 
Robert 

“Pete” Piotrowski celebrated 
his 100th birthday.
Yes, Piotrowski has been 
around for half of the univer-
sity’s existence. Yes, he has 
seen and heard it all. 
When he was a child, he lis-

tened to the famous sports 
broadcaster Ty Tyson give 
play-by-play 
of 
Michigan 

football games on the radio. 
Piotrowski later rode the 
same train as Tyson and the 
rest of the team as they trav-
eled to games.
When he was in seventh 
grade, Piotrowski would play 
football with his classmates 
during recess and pretend 
he was Bennie Oosterbaan, 
one of the greatest athletes in 
Michigan history. And when 
Piotrowski 
came 
to 
Ann 

Arbor, there was Oosterbaan, 
serving as an assistant coach.
When he was a reserve on 
the varsity team, Piotrowski 

came across halfback Tom 
Harmon. At the time, Har-
mon was a freshman not 
allowed to play on varsity; 
his star had yet to be born. 
One day, Piotrowski lined up 
against Harmon in a tackling 
drill.
A lot of people can say 
they’ve tackled a Heisman 
Trophy winner. Not many 
still around can say the same 
about Harmon.
“You knew who (Harmon) 

was,” 
Piotrowski 
recalled 

in an interview this week at 
his retirement home in Novi. 
“They brought him in, and 
they knew he was going to be 
good. You saw him sometimes 
during drills, in tackling 
drills or something. You’d 
tackle him if he happened to 
be in one of the lines.
“It was just a guy coming 
down the line and you’d tack-
le him. Wasn’t a big deal.”
It may not have been a big 
deal at the time, but looking 
back, it is. That’s the story of 
Piotrowski’s Michigan legacy 
— his career may have never 
got far off the ground, but his 
experiences provide a win-

dow through nearly a centu-
ry of Michigan history.
***
As hard as it may be to believe 
now, Michigan went 77 years 
without a gymnasium on its 
campus.
According to a report from 
the 
Bentley 
Historical 

Library, regents had dis-
cussed a facility “as early 
as 1870,” but the state legis-
lature was in dire financial 
straits and couldn’t fund 

the project. In 1891, though, 
a generous donation from 
Joshua W. Waterman kick-
started a spirited fundraising 
effort from the University. By 
1894, Waterman Gymnasium 
stood at 930 North Univer-
sity Avenue.
The Waterman gym was a 
work of art. It was 150 feet 
tall and had an appearance 
more befitting of a castle 
than a recreational facility.
Piotrowski was a frequent 
visitor to the gym — both 
Waterman and other facili-
ties — when he enrolled at 
Michigan in the fall of 1935. 
In fact, that was where he 
earned a spot on the Michi-

gan football team during the 
winter of his freshman year.
“(Assistant 
coach) 
Wally 

Weber called me,” Piotrows-
ki said, “and asked me to 
meet him at the gym.”
Earlier, 
Weber 
and 
head 

coach Harry Kipke had vis-
ited schools up north looking 
for players to recruit. When 
they 
reached 
Piotrowski’s 

high school, his old coach 
told them there was already 
a player in Ann Arbor that 

could make the team.
So Piotrowski went to the 
gym after the phone call. 
There, he met Kipke, Weber 
and “a couple linemen.”
Piotrowski was never a large 
man, even in his youth. He 
says he weighed 167 pounds 
during his playing career. 
Yet that day he displayed 
an 
unnatural 
amount 
of 

strength.
“They had one of the exer-
cise machines that you push 
with your shoulders, two 
guys,” Piotrowski said. “And 
I did pretty well, I could do 
a little better than the line-
men did. (Kipke) must’ve 
been impressed, anyways. So 

I ended up on the Michigan 
football team.”
***
Piotrowski didn’t pick Mich-
igan because of its football 
team. He did so for a more 
practical reason — he wanted 
to attend pharmacy school.
And though he was on the 
team, being a football player 
was neither the glamorous 
nor time-consuming job that 
it is now. No one stopped 
him on the street for pho-

tos. There was no stipend 
from the athletic department 
to pay for room and board. 
Piotrowski paid for living 

costs by working as a dish-
washer and waiter at a den-
tal fraternity “way up Hill 

Street.”
Eventually, he joined a fra-
ternity, Kappa Sigma, and 
lived there for the rest of his 
time on campus. That was 
how he met his wife.
“It 
was 
a 
blind 
date,” 

Piotrowski recalled. “One of 
my fraternity brothers had a 
girl over there he knew and 
I guess I didn’t have a date, 
and he fixed up a date with 
my wife, Jean. And we went 
together after that, since my 

sophomore year.”
Football, it appears, was sim-
ply there in Piotrowski’s life, 
and nothing more. He had 
never thought he would make 
it on the team and was cer-
tainly glad for the opportu-
nity. But it didn’t rule his life. 
Playing professionally wasn’t 
an option and he didn’t want 
to be a football or basketball 
coach, which he says was the 
reason many players were on 
the team.
The Wolverines, meanwhile, 
were in the midst of a brutal 
four-year stretch. Through 
Piotrowski’s sophomore and 
junior seasons in 1936 and 
1937, Michigan went a com-

Football Saturday, September 16, 2017
4

One Century: A Man and his University

ORION SANG

Daily Sports Editor

...and they 

knew 

(Harmon) was 

going to be 

good

