. . .Beshears (freshman housemate of Pete's, now a professor at Harvard Business School- ed.) remembers that by early 2003, as the United States prepared to invade Iraq, the normally reserved Buttigieg found a public voice. The poll he had worked on revealed that most college students supported the impending war.

But he spoke out against it at a rally at Harvard. "I really admired him for having the courage to get up there and take a stand on an issue that he believed very strongly in when it was not actually, at least to my mind, very easy to make a call," Beshears said.

A Passion For Service

"A lot of people thinking about Peter at Harvard imagine, 'oh, he must have been the most ambitious political person on the face of the earth,' " said King, the (Kennedy School-ed.) professor with whom Buttigieg used to talk about religion in American life. But that's not what King said he saw."What I got from Peter was deep concern and deep care about his generation," King said. "Despite leading a very political organization at the Institute of Politics, Peter never came off as tremendously political. It's quite an interesting ability."

It's an impression shared by all the friends and faculty members interviewed for this story: that Buttigieg was not that self-promoting student everyone knew would go into politics, but rather was a reserved intellectual who got along with everyone. At Harvard, he found his voice. His friends expected him to choose public service, but not necessarily politics.