Joseph E. Pechinsky, Brandeis' men's fencing coach from 1970 to 1980 and a member of the United States Fencing Hall of Fame, died at the age of 92 last Thursday at the Radius Health Care Center in Danvers, Mass.

"He was very much a gentleman to everyone that he met all the time," said men's and women's fencing coach Bill Shipman, who took over the coaching job at Brandeis after Pechinsky left in 1981. "He always had good looks for everyone. He was very well liked here at Brandeis. He only worked part-time, so he wasn't around a lot, but the kids all liked him and respected him."

While at Brandeis, Pechinksky recruited fencers for the team by asking many of his physical education students at Brandeis to join the team.

"It was a different time [for recruiting]," Shipman said. "He mostly took kids out of [physical education] class and asked them to be on the team; [he got] a good number of kids like that. There wasn't really any recruiting or anything much like there is now, so it was all different."

Pechinsky was a wrestling coach at the Salem YMCA in Salem, Mass. in the early 1960s when he suffered a serious knee injury while wrestling one of his students. He was introduced to fencing by one of his wrestling students and quickly discovered a love for the sport and pursued fencing further. Pechinsky took a few private lessons but realized that coaching was his passion.

Pechinsky, who never fenced a scored match, began coaching fencing at the Salem YMCA and quickly became one of the most famous fencing coaches in the country for his work at the Tanner City Fencers Club in Peabody, Mass.

"[Pechinsky] came to us in the mid-1970s and told us the Salem YMCA had run out of space, and he wanted to know if we could accommodate him in Peabody," said Peabody Recreation Director Dick Walker in an article published in the Salem News on Dec. 18, 2008. "Joe was inspiring. He became internationally known, a coach emeritus of the U.S. Olympic Fencing Team, and he put Tanner City on the map."

In addition to coaching NCAA National Champions at Tanner City, Pechinsky had at least one student of his on each United States Olympic team from 1968 to 2000. His niece, Sally Pechinsky, competed in foil in the 1968 Summer Olympics.

For his contributions to the fencing community, Pechinsky was inducted into the United States Fencing Hall of Fame in 1996. He continued coaching until 2006 when he suffered a broken hip from falling down a set of stairs after a fencing practice in Peabody. That was the last fencing practice Pechinsky ever gave.

While Pechinsky coached fencing throughout his life, he also served for 31 years on the Peabody Fire Department and retired in 1983. Before his time in the fire department, Pechinsky enlisted in the United States Army in 1940 and survived the attack on Pearl Harbor. He served in the Pacific Theater until he was discharged in 1945.

During his spare time, Pechinsky was an avid mountain climber and artist. He climbed mountains such as the Swiss Alps, the Matterhorn on the border of Switzerland and France and the Riffelhorn in Switzerland.

Pechinsky was a true Renaissance man, and the fencing and Brandeis communities will miss him.