He grew up in Great Neck, N.Y.; attended Choate School; and served briefly in the British Royal Navy. At Princeton, where his brother John was a member of the Class of ’45, Peter majored in history. He became a U.S. citizen in his 20s.
Peter and his late wife, Anne, met in New York City and married in 1954. Their family home for more than half a century was in Rowayton, Conn., where they raised four children: daughters Stephanie, Jennifer, and Hilary; and son Anthony.
After a brief period teaching at the Hawkins School in Lyndhurst, Ohio, and then at Punahou School in Honolulu, Peter began a career in risk management, casualty insurance, and corporate self-insurance for companies including Aramco, the conglomerate USI, and Schlumberger.
A longtime activist in Planned Parenthood, Peter was a national board member and developed a program for self-insurance of its many local facilities. Away from business, his passions were paddle tennis and progressive politics. For a time Peter was a city commissioner in Rowayton, and he was a longtime board member of the Norwalk Land Trust. He was a volunteer for 18 years at the Norwalk Maritime Center. For 48 years he played the prophet Isaiah in the annual Rowayton Christmas pageant.
Peter died June 26, 2020, in Amesville, Conn., at age 93. He had lived there since 2015 at the home of Jennifer Law and Alan Lovejoy, his daughter and son-in-law.