Deceased December 19, 2003

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In Memory

The Boston Globe obituary reported that Ken Kulesza, formerly of Hingham, Massachusetts, died on December 19, 2003. He was husband of the late Joan (Benson) Kulesza and father of Kristen N. Shutt, Kara L. Geary and Derek K. Kulesza. Information from the college listed his employment as President of Execucomp Systems in Norwell from 1984-2003.

The obituary omits a lot. Ken's friends filled in some of what the obituary left out.

Rick Benner '64 offers this perspective: "I've been looking at Klu's picture in the '64 Olio. I've sat here for thirty minutes alternately staring at his picture then turning away to think of the time I had with him. His photo shows him as serious. It simply says, 'Hatfield, Theta Delta Chi, Major, Economics and Student.' It forgot 'friend.'

"Klu was a great friend, not an Econ Major. And he had fun. His right hand always seems raised belt-high. And finally I remembered why. It was a beer.

"He was a friend I could talk to about some tough stuff. At Amherst we had talked about wanting to drop out of school for a year. He had thought long and hard about needing time away, so the college time would mean more when he returned.

"I am writing this surrounded by trees and blossoms of Virginia spring. I sure don't see Klu as a blossom. But he WAS a sturdy tree. I can't think of many other people right now whom I'd like to see walking up the hill and stepping into my home. He would have a big Klu smile. We would have fun, both of us drinking a beer, reminiscing. I haven't seen him for decades, but I miss him.

Steve Smith '64 recollects: "Ken attended Smith Academy in Hatfield, MA, a small school that maybe had eleven boys in it, five of whom played basketball. Two of those five were Ken Kulesza and Ed Malinowski '64, both of whom were accepted at Amherst College. I attended Amherst Regional High School. Amherst High and Smith Academy were basketball rivals. Our senior year, Smith Academy trounced Amherst High, and Ken later told me he hated our pep band so much that he and his teammates did everything they could to quiet it forever.

"Ken was a scholarship student, as was I, getting about $600 a year in assistance. We both worked on occasion in Valentine Hall washing dishes. We roomed with Rick Benner '64 and Ken Garni '64 at Theta Delta Chi our junior year. Rick gave everyone nicknames such as 'Magician' for Garni, 'Smiss' for me, 'Natty Bumppo' for Russ Hume '64, 'Ralph' for himself, and 'Mr. Clean' for Ken. 'Mr. Clean' was a big, good looking dude who always wore a big grin and always looked happy, much like that fellow who graced the bottle of cleanser. Everyone liked him. He made everyone around him feel good about life. Ralph was the slob of the room, his dirty clothes always piled on the floor, so much so that you sometimes couldn't get from the living room to the bedroom. Ken picked up a bit, which also may have given rise to Ralph's calling him 'Mr. Clean.'

"Ken was the proud owner of a motor scooter, which I was allowed to use on occasion to scoot over the notch to Mount Holyoke to chase Deede Biorn, who I eventually married. The summer after our junior year, Ken and I had Ken's motor scooter with us on Cape Cod. We lived in a tent in Truro and got jobs at a restaurant. Ken was old enough to be a waiter, I was not and had to work in the kitchen. The owner was gay; the chef was nuts. I remember a chef-thrown knife heading in my direction, and I remember the gay owner hitting on Ken. Ken rebuffed the advance, and shortly thereafter, we were fired. We were able to scoot down the road about a mile and land the same jobs at a different Truro restaurant.

"This was the best summer of Ken's life because one of the waitresses was a young woman named Joan Benson. Joan had an identical twin sister, and the four of us did a lot of beaching, drinking, and scooting around on the Cape. We'd work from noon until 11 p.m. and then beat it down to the beach for the night. Sometimes we'd make it back to our tent. Joan made it to a lot of campus parties our senior year.

"I was a groomsman in Ken and Joan's wedding in the Old North Church in Boston. I remember the ceremony but not much else. Unfortunately, Joan died of cancer about the time of our 25th Reunion. Ken was too devastated to attend."

Russ Hume '64 adds: "Ken was a recruit from Hatfield, a typical early sixties small working town devoted to agriculture, and the major population was Polish. It wasn't too far into Ken's brotherhood at Theta Delt that he realized that some of his fun-loving, party-seeking brothers might be interested in the local colors of Hatfield. Ken got a group of couples together for a Saturday excursion to the famous Hatfield Barn. It featured a local redneck working class clientele that had a good time by doing two things: drinking beer and dancing the polka. Ken's Theta Delt friends did one of those activities well and struggled at the other. But the important thing is that all had a ball, Ken who was responsible. I'm truly sorry to lose a brother and a big ole teddy bear kind of friend."

And Ken Garni '64 recalls: "When we were roommates and even more so after we graduated, I loved arguing/debating with Ken the relative merits of baseball, basketball, and soccer. As I lost many of those debates, we then argued the relative merits of his Red Sox and my Dodgers. I wish he knew that I had 'converted' before he died. Later we gloried in sharing stories about parenting daughters and wondering what we were going to be like when they started dating. And finally, while Joan was alive, we enjoyed old Amherst stories, mostly Joan's highlighting how 'mature' and 'sophisticated' we were on the weekends she visited Ken and had to put up with all of us. She never forgot those days and even gloried in embarrassing us with pictures. I will always carry pleasant memories of good times with Ken and Joan in their backyard in Hingham, watching our kids swim in their pool and sharing barbecues and many beers with them. He was the same solid, caring family man as he was as our roommate and friend many years earlier at Amherst. He cast a large shadow."

Steve Smith '64 concludes, "Barry O'Connell, professor of English, has been recently credited with saying, 'There's no one way to be an Amherst person. Students here are idiosyncratic and unpredictably various.' Professor O'Connell did not know Mr. Clean, and he did not know Klu, and he did not know Ken Kulesza, Econ Major. While the student body might be unpredictable and idiosyncratic, Ken was a predictable and dependable friend to all of us."

Rick Benner '64
Ken Garni '64
Russ Hume '64
Steve Smith '64
David Stringer '64