By Rich Lynch: I learned about his death from a short two-line obit in the December issue of Ansible:

Piotr ‘Raku’ Rak (1962-2023), noted Polish fanzine editor, con-goer and club/award organizer who won special Eurocon awards in 1991 and 1993, died on 2 November aged 61.

To me, the fandom I know is maybe a bit like an ornate tapestry – filled with colorful memories about events I’ve participated in and people I’d met and come to know over the years.  And every time one of those people passes it creates a tear in that fabric.  That’s definitely the case with Piotr.

He was not the first Polish fan I ever met – that distinction goes to Andrzej Kowalski, who at that time was his supervisor.  Most of my professional career had been as an International Activities Advisor at the U.S. Department of Energy and way back in 1992, Andrzej had been part of a visiting Polish delegation of energy experts that I had chaperoned to meetings at several technology demonstration sites in the United States.  We were out in the middle of Kentucky, almost a week into the trip, before I discovered he was an avid science fiction reader and fan.  And it had probably been a similar revelation for Andrzej to discover that I was, too.

I met Piotr the following year on my first of many trips to Poland.  Andrzej had assigned Piotr as my liaison when I visited their energy institute in Katowice.  He had evidently informed Piotr of my interests in science fiction and that I was a fan because it was what our first extended conversation was mostly about.  Things were in transition, during that first ten years following the fall of communism, and I was fortunate that there had been sufficient interest from the U.S. Government, in terms of getting greater knowledge of Poland’s energy sector, that I was able to find funding to go there about once or twice a year through the end of the 1990s and very beginning of the 2000s.  Whenever I traveled to Poland, Katowice and its energy institute was always part of my itinerary.  And my point of contact there was always Piotr.

We became friends very quickly.  Science fiction and its fandom was a common denominator, of course, but it went beyond that.  He took time away from his family to make sure everything was okay during my stays in Katowice and that included setting up a dinner with him and others in his local fandom whenever I was in town.  They were bonding experiences, fueled by good food and good beer.  It was at one of these dinners I met the prominent Polish fan and translator Piotr Cholewa, and we all found we had yet more of common interest – 1970s and 1980s rock music.  I told them in more detail than was probably necessary about a fabulous Springsteen concert I’d attended in Tennessee and got back a similar amount about a Jethro Tull concert at Katowice’s big flying saucer-shaped sports arena.  It went on from there – it was a  musical geekfest.

The time Piotr went the most out of his way to help me was on the first day of my May 2000 trip.  Just as the train to Katowice was about to depart the Warsaw Central Station, two guys jostled me while I was struggling to get settled in the railcar compartment and got away with my wallet.  All my credit cards were in that wallet, including my ATM card.  It could have been a financial disaster.  But Piotr met me at the Katowice train station and he immediately provided unlimited use of his mobile phone to call back to the United States to cancel the stolen credit cards, arrange for replacements, and get some cash wired to me.  He also vouched for me at the hotel so I could check in without a credit card.  And he even treated me to dinner at one of Katowice’s many pleasant sidewalk restaurants.  He absolutely saved my trip.

I didn’t know it then, but that was the last time I’d ever see him.  He wasn’t at my meeting the next day with the institute’s upper management and when that concluded I was whisked away to the Katowice station for a train ride back to Warsaw.  We kept in touch by email and I’d planned to go back there the next year, in the autumn, but then 9-11 happened and all international travel was put on hiatus.  By the time that had lifted my funding had dried up and I had been reassigned to another group where my travels took me to other places in the world.  I did eventually make it back to Poland, but not anywhere near Katowice.

And now he’s gone.  What I have left to remember him by are a few photos I’d taken of him all those years ago.  But up in my headspace he’s still alive and probably always will be.  Oh, and there’s one more thing.  Even though he wasn’t at that next day’s meeting he’d made sure I was given a replacement for the wallet that had been stolen – a much nicer one than what I’d had.  I still have it.  And I make use of it whenever I’m on the road.  Like me, it’s starting to show its age but I’m not going to discard it.  It’s a reminder of all the good times.