While many people scurried through the snow Thursday morning, Joe Pietrantoni sat in his West Union Building basement office chatting with a reporter, interrupted only once.
Chuck Catotti, director of Event Management, poked his head in to get the Auxiliary Services baron's permission to let a student assistant into President Nan Keohane's office until the president's executive secretary could make it to campus.
"Sure," Pietrantoni said. "Procedure," he explained a few seconds later, before going back to the interview.
Pietrantoni, or more accurately, "Joe Piet," has been at the heart of University procedure for the past 33 years - from his cost-recovery mantra of "quality product, quality service, competitive prices" to his trademark "hello, friend" salutation.
Starting off as an assistant director of facilities management in 1970, the 65-year-old Pietrantoni will retire this summer as the outgoing associate vice president for auxiliary services, having presided over as varied a list of operations as dining, parking, the DukeCard office, postal services, publishing, housekeeping and at one time, even pest control.
It's no wonder that in a letter announcing Pietrantoni's retirement and the subsequent reorganization of Auxiliary Services, Executive Vice President Tallman Trask wrote that Pietrantoni is simply irreplaceable.
"Some things could be better, but I feel good about Auxiliary Services," Pietrantoni said. "The Auxiliaries of the future will stay strong, but it's time for someone else to pack it up and carry it to its future."
Looking back at his career in an interview, Pietrantoni continued to sell his accomplishments much like he has sold so many concepts over the years - the largest card system in the country, more dining options and vendors than any other campus, No. 1 in per capita sales at the Duke University Stores.
It was his decision to name a Central Campus grocery store after one of his employees, "Uncle" Harry Rainey, just as it was his decision to take over all of the operations at the Marine Lab in Beaufort, N.C. last year.
Reminiscing, he ticks off names of students who have once worked for him who have gone on to Harvard Business School, or now work in Durham, or even remain on campus, such as Fidelia Thomason, director of housing management.
Paul Davies, finance director of Auxiliary Services, the man who will most closely follow in Pietrantoni's footsteps - in charge of dining, DukeCard, mail, Duke University Stores and Event Management - characterized Pietrantoni as the mentor he always wished he had, a sentiment shared by directors in many of the departments currently within Auxiliary Services.
Jim Wulforst, director of dining services, said that over the course of many interviews at Duke before coming to Durham, Pietrantoni not only pitched Duke to Wulforst, but to his wife as well, and that both of them were "romanced with his enthusiasm."
"Joe did everything he could to sell my wife on the benefits of living at Duke," he said. "Joe is just an entrepreneur at heart."
Pietrantoni, who has served as an associate vice president for the past 10 years, came to Duke from General Electric, where he worked at Cape Canaveral with the manned space program. Upon his arrival, he served as the assistant director of facilities management, where he handled grounds, sanitation and housekeeping. Eventually, he became director of campus services and started building Auxiliary Services, picking up food services, stores and housing.
In the mid-1980s as an assistant vice president, he helped turn food services into a positive-revenue operation. He launched one of the first University card systems in the early 1990s, and more recently, he has worked to diversify vendor options for campus eateries.
"Joe Piet is such a campus personality, he's been so deeply involved in student life for so many years, it will be hard not to have him around with his can-do effort, smile and 'sure we'll try it,' mentality.... But we will have to lose his own particular flair, because it will be very hard for anyone to replicate," Keohane said. "I hope he won't be too far away. A lot of people like [former vice president for student affairs] Bill Griffith have remained involved after they step down from their jobs because they love Duke. I hope Joe Piet does the same."
Talking about the future of his many departments - be it replacing the DukeCard with thumbscan biometric technology or replacing the East-West bus system with a monorail through a renovated Central Campus - it's clear to see that Joe Piet promises to hang around for awhile.
"You take everything in your life in time frames," Pietrantoni said. "Now I'm looking forward to having leisure time and traveling. But I'll do some consulting to universities and colleges, and try to stay active on an as-I-need-to basis."
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.