Richard Peyton Woodson III ’45

Dick, Woody, or Peyton, as we knew him, came from Albuquerque, N.M. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy.

He was a captain and B-17 bomber pilot in the Army Air Force at Snetterton Heath, England, during World War II. In Operation Chowhound he dropped crates of food to Dutch citizens.

At Princeton he was in Whig-Clio, the Foreign Affairs Club, Orange Key, Exeter Club, and the Inter-Club Committee. He was vice president of the Rocky Mountain Empire Club and president of Terrace Club. He majored in politics and graduated cum laude in 1949. He then attended Stanford Business School, where he was elected president of his class.

Peyton ran the family grocery business in Albuquerque, and married Martha Avison. He joined the family insurance business, Occidental Life Insurance of North Carolina and British-American Insurance in Raleigh, N.C. He served as chairman of the Life Office Management Association, the industry’s largest association.

He was on boards and committees including Shaw University, North Carolina Symphony Society, United Arts, Triangle Community Foundation, West Raleigh Rotary Club, Mayor’s Community Relations Committee, Family Health International Foundation, and FHI360, which addresses family planning and HIV/AIDS worldwide. In 2013 Peyton was inducted into the Raleigh Hall of Fame, and in 2016 France awarded him the Legion of Honor Medal.

Peyton died Jan. 5, 2017. His wife predeceased him in 2011 after 58 years of marriage. He is survived by his children, Sheila Horine, Richard Woodson IV, and Martha Dunnagan; grandchildren Margaret, Katherine, and Hannah Horine, William Jessup, Alex Hughes, and Peyton and Evelyn Dunnagan; and three great-grandchildren, Emma Horine, and Peyton and Addison Hughes.