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