Pete died Oct. 10, 2011, in Des Moines of a heart attack after suffering cancer of the esophagus, a failed gall bladder, and a broken shoulder.
Coming to Princeton from Theodore Roosevelt High School in Des Moines, Pete became managing editor of The Daily Princetonian, vice president of the Westminster Foundation, a Chapel deacon, co-editor of the Extracurricular Activity Handbook, and a member of Campus Club’s bicker committee. He wrote his thesis at the Woodrow Wilson School on “The French Intellectual’s View of the United States Since World War II.”
After graduation, Pete served six months in the Army and taught English at Tunghai University in Taiwan and business at Buena Vista College in western Iowa. He also earned an M.B.A. at the University of Cincinnati, wrote for The Detroit News and The Wall Street Journal, and served as editor of the Berea(Ky.) Citizen and the iconoclastic Greenwood Review. During the last several years, Pete worked as a bookseller at Barnes & Noble. He enjoyed swimming, jogging, and singing in a Drake University/Community Chorus, and saw every play and almost every movie that came to Des Moines.
Pete’s sons, Jonathan and David, and their wives, Marina Peterson and Jannette; Pete’s sister Sallie; and brother Robert survive him. Another sister, Susan Seward, preceded him in death. The class extends sincere condolences to them.