OK. Wow! so sorry to hear this. My association with peter goes back to our 2 years together at St. Bonaventure in 1969 and 1970. We lived on the same floor of Devereaux Dorm, the floor with all the jocks ..Bob Lanear, Bill Calbaw, Matt Gant. 1969 was the year St. Bonnie basketball team almost went he whole way at the NIT. As you can imagine it was a free-for-all since none of the jocks had to study. It was also the year of the first freshman women at St. Bonnies!
Peter and I hit it off right from the start. And here's where the story gets a little 60's-ish. Of course even at a small Franciscian college tucked away in the southern-tier of NY, recreational drugs were ubiquitous, including LSD, of course (hey, it was the year the first led Zepplin album was released!). peter had connections to a "friend" in NYC that was a chemist, or knew a chemist. Every few weeks Peter would get an envelope in the mail ...with a sheet of white blotter paper (remember the old quill ink pens?) ...with a series of small little green dots the size of a pinhead all across the paper. he would announce that the "mail had arrived" and would proceed to cut the paper into little squares with a dot in each one and hand them out to "participants" on the floor. You can imagine (well maybe you can't) the outcome for the next 10-18 hours!!!!!
St. Bonnies saw us get into a lot of shenanigans. peter was always ready for a party and as a big old "bear" commanded a lot of respect when at a bar (especially on escapades up into Buffalo, where one of my roommates, Kevin Grew, was from. I could go on about escapades in college, from demolishing the town barn down at the local park along the Susquehanna River, to the "TV heist" when there was a train strike and a row of train cars sat on the tracks behind our dorms. Needless to say many of the guys on the floor all of a sudden had brand new color TV's in their rooms.... ended with the FBI investigating and a few being expelled.
Crazy stuff! But we were kids and it was the 60's and everyone was rebellious, and anti establishment.
The most memorable event with peter was when he invited me to his home in NYC for thanksgiving in 1970. We took the bus down. I had never been to the city since I was a 12-year old kid going to the world's fair. When we got there, he informed me that his parents were gone on some trip and wouldn't be home, but his mother had left a turkey in the oven, timed to cook for us. Well, Peter had a couple of the little pieces of blotter with him and we decided to ingest. The next thing I remember is driving around NYC in his Dad's black Lincoln limo (he was an undertaker, as I recall) listening to Frank Zappa's "Chunga's Revenge" that had just come out. Let me tell you, it was a ride I will never forget ...you just can't imagine!. We returned home unscathed (car too) and the turkey was ready and we savagely attacked it. It was the best tasking turkey i have ever had!
My time at St. Bonnies with Peter wasn't all drugs and partying, We had many interesting conversations about the war (we were both lucky enough to have high numbers for the draft), life in general, and just "boy talk" when you're 19 and away from home for the first time.
He was a true friend, and I just recently in the past year or so found him via the internet. we chatted a few times via e-mail and I called him once and we talked. Even after over 40 years of no contact, there was the instant college bond that we had established. i can only imagine the friendship he garnered and gave over the years to all of the other people that he touched in his life. Although I wasn't in close contact with him, his passing leaves a small gap in my heart. we were all blessed to have been touched by his spirit. May we all touch someone that way too, in our lives.
Be well old friend. ..buy the ticket, take the ride....
love ya' man
Bugs-