P14 was, hands down, the most unusual person I’ve ever met. He was a great classical piano player; he turned down a scholarship to Julliard to go to MIT. He was absolutely brilliant. He ran quiz reviews in physics and math for the fraternity and he was an excellent teacher. A number of guys never would have made it through without him. His grades were poor, though, because school didn’t interest him much and he tended to be a night person. If you heard classical piano music wafting through the halls at 4 AM, that would be P14.
In those days, as a land grant college, MIT required two years of ROTC. P14 and another guy had a contest to see who could get the most demerits. They were cutting all the ROTC classes and drills so they were in a dead heat near the end of a term. P14 won by going to class and giving the instructor a hard time. That had a price, though. P14 had to come back for a full term just to make up that course to get his degree. We had his drill schedule, and we would occasionally drop by to cheer him on.
P14 was a very charming guy. You would talk to him for ten minutes and find yourself telling him your life story. P14 was also gay. The upperclassmen would take bets on how long it would take the freshmen to figure that out as P14 would bring a parade of Polish seamen and high school English teachers to parties as “old friends”, rather than girls. (You have to remember that this was the ‘50s when gay bashing was a popular outdoor sport and not even Broadway actors came out of the closet.) It is a testimony to the tolerance learned at PK that when I see old friends they will all eventually ask, “Have you heard from P14? How is he?” The answer is: He is still being P14. (He was such a strong influence on PK that in 2013 a Facebook page was created just to collect people’s recollections of him — the only PK from those years so honored.)