In Memoriam: Richard W. Piontek

1937-2013

Adapted from obituary published in The Recorder, Greenfield, Massachusetts, 30 October 2013

Richard W. (Dick) Piontek died peacefully at his home on Sunday, 27 October 2013. He was the son of Stanley Piontek and Anna Navicky and was born in Greenfield, Massachusetts, on 3 July 1937. His parents and his sister, Janet Kurtyka, predeceased him. Survivors include his wife of 26 years, Ann (Cadarette); brother-in-law, Kenneth Kurtyka, Sr.; nephew, Kenneth Kurtyka, Jr.; and niece, Kimberly Barnes, all from Greenfield, Massachusetts.

Dick graduated from Greenfield High School, Class of 1955, and earned an AAS degree at Holyoke Junior College in 1957. He worked as a mechanical engineer for three years, first with the Nickel Cadmium Battery Corp. in Easthampton, Massachusetts, and then with Kingsbury Tool in Keene, New Hampshire. In 1958, he joined the Bricklayers & Allied Craftworkers Union Local 1 and worked on many projects, including the early stages of the building of I-91 in Brattleboro, where he worked on the bridge abutments. From 1960 to 1963, he worked in Manhattan and Long Island for John B. Kelly as a bricklayer.

After earning a BA in biology in 1965, he took a three-year position as a biochemist at Sterling Winthrop Research Institute in Rensselaer, New York, and worked one year at the New England Institute for Medical Research in Ridgefield, Connecticut. From 1968 to 1969, while working as a fellow in radiation physics at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, he earned his MS in radiological health physics from Rutgers University. In 1970, he earned his MS in radiological physics from Harvard School of Public Health and worked as a radiological physicist for the Harvard Joint Program in Nuclear Medicine at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

n 1971, he was appointed associate in radiation therapy at the Harvard Medical School and joined the Joint Center for Radiation Therapy in Boston, Massachusetts, as a staff medical physicist, where he stayed until 1985. During this time period, he produced and coauthored many papers and publications involving research on proton beams, electron therapy, design properties of intraoperative radiation therapy, and bone marrow transplantation. In 1982, he received certification in therapeutic radiological physics from the American College of Radiology. In 1985, he took a position as staff medical physicist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, retiring in 2003, and was appointed assistant professor of clinical medicine at Dartmouth Medical School in 1985.

Dick was a member of the Health Physics Society and the American Association of Physicists in Medicine.

Always an outdoorsman, Dick enjoyed hunting, fishing, and cutting trails in the woods. He also enjoyed reading and collecting maps, traveling, and learning as much as he could about physics, science, and math. He loved to cook everywhere, from a hibachi on the fire escape in Manhattan to a tailgate grill to the manifold of his army truck. He will be remembered for his hard work, dedication, jokes, limericks, and crazy antics. If asked what he did for a living, he usually said he was a bricklayer, proud to have received a 50-year recognition in the Bricklayers Union.

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