bined 5-12. By the end of 
the 1937 season, Kipke’s 
tenure was near its end.
“Kipke was already let 
know that he wasn’t going 
to be rehired,” Piotrowski 
said. “But none of us knew, 
nobody knew that. Kipke 
wanted to hold onto his 
job, he had Tom Harmon 
coming up as a freshman 
then.”
That transitory period — 
and Kipke’s efforts to hold 
onto his job — seem to 
have cost Piotrowski his 
only chance at becoming a 
starter.
According to Piotrowski, 
he had appeared in sev-
eral 
games 
throughout 

his career, playing half-
back most of the time 
while occasionally being 
employed 
as 
a 
tackler. 

Then, on the suggestion of 
the trainer, he had tried 
out for fullback, and “did 
pretty well at that.”
He expected to start at 
Penn during the second-
to-last week of the 1937 
season, which would have 
earned him a varsity letter. 
But that never happened.
“Someone 
didn’t 
want 

me in there, or wanted 
someone else to start,” 
Piotrowski recalled. “So I 
was kinda shut out. It was 
the team before the Ohio 
State 
game. 
But 
Kipke 

came to me the following 
Monday at practice and 
apologized for not playing 
me.
“I was only a kid then, I 
didn’t say anything. He 
says, ‘I couldn’t play you.’ I 
think he was hanging onto 
his job.”
The next year, Piotrowski 
quit the team. It happened 
just as easily — and natu-
rally — as him joining. He 
wanted to continue court-
ing Jean, and he didn’t see 
a long-term future in the 
sport.
Losing out on the chance 
to start was tough for 
Piotrowski to swallow at 
the time, and his brow 
furrowed 
slightly 
when 

recalling the incident 80 
years later. But he says he 
was alright with the deci-
sion, and he’s moved on.
“Some little things you 
remember,” 
Piotrowski 

said, “but you just forgive 
and you forget. … I can kind 
of forget things like that 
pretty fast.
“There’s a lot going on at 
Michigan. (My) last year, I 

went to the 
gym a lot.”
***
In 
1977, 

Waterman 
Gymna-
sium 
was 

demolished 
to 
make 

room for an 
expansion of 
the Chemis-
try Building.
To 
expect 

Michigan’s 
campus 
to 
remain 

mostly 
unchanged 
since 
Piotrowski’s 
matricula-
tion 
would 

be 
irratio-

nal. 
Many 

of the expe-
riences 
he 

described 
are a glance 
into a sepia-
toned past.
Piotrowski 
loved 
to 

bowl at the 
Union with 
friends. 
Once, 
he 

earned 
a 

t-shirt as the 
bowler of the 
week. There is no bowling in 
the Union anymore, but there 
is a Wendy’s.
He used to buy a sweet roll 
and coffee for 
breakfast at a 
price of just 15 
cents. Tuition 
per 
semester 

was $50.
He found suc-
cess at full-
back 
at 
the 

cradle of col-
lege 
football 

weighing just 
167 
pounds. 

Khalid 
Hill 

and 
Henry 

Poggi 
weigh 

263 and 257 
pounds, 
respectively.
Piotrowski 
estimates 
he 

was 
85 
the 

last time he 
attended 
a 

game in Ann 
Arbor. He says 
he’d get lost if he tried walk-
ing around campus nowa-
days.
Yes, 
some 
things 
have 

changed 
since 
Robert 

Piotrowski attended classes 

at Michigan. But the spir-
it of it all — that remains 
unchanged.
Piotrowski remembers the 
weekends spent downtown 

drinking 
beer with his 
fraternity 
brothers. 
He 

remembers 
frantically 
cramming 
late at night 
for tests. He 
remembers 
the pride of 
walking onto 
the 
field 
in 

front of a sold-
out crowd at 
Michigan Sta-
dium, only a 
couple 
years 

after 
play-

ing in front 
of 
sparsely-

populated 
bleachers 
in 

Manistee.
And he still 
remembers 

why he went to Michigan in 
the first place, and what it 
gave him.
“I’m glad I went to Michigan 
because you learn some of 
the finer things,” Piotrows-

ki said. “Classical music. 
Go to concerts, which you 
wouldn’t do if you lived in a 
small town. They didn’t have 
anything like that. … I’d go 
back (home) to visit quite 
often, of course. But there’s 
more opportunities (in Ann 
Arbor), things you learn 
going to school, in a frater-
nity.
“Sometimes you lie in bed 
and Ann Arbor comes up to 
you. These little things that 
you never thought of for 
years come up. I’m glad I 
went to a bigger school. Oth-
erwise I would’ve ended up 
back in Manistee and I don’t 
know what I’d be doing.”
Later in his life, long after 
graduation, Piotrowski trav-
eled the world with Jean. 
He went to China, Japan, 
New Zealand, Australia and 
South America. Those trips, 
he says, wouldn’t have hap-
pened 
without 
Michigan. 

The 
university 
“enabled” 

him to think about all the 
possibilities — such as trav-
eling the world — that he 
never would have thought 
about in Manistee.
“I was looking for something 
more,” 
Piotrowski 
said, 

“which I got at Michigan.” 

5
TheMichiganDaily, www.michigandaily.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF ORION SANG

Sometimes 
you lie in bed 
and Ann Arbor 

comes up to 
you. These 

little things you 
never thought 

of for years 
come up.