Complex sentence: A patrician Republican politician blessed with the common touch, "Sarge" was a 1939 graduate of the Massacusetts Institute of Technology where he was a classmate and friend of I.M. Pei's, he was on the dean's list each year and received a scholastic prize.
Split into simpler sentences: A patrician Republican politician, "Sarge" was a 1939 graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was a classmate and friend of I.M. Pei. He was on the dean's list each year and received a scholastic prize.