Peter was born in Newton, Massachusetts, on January 20, 1942. At age twenty, he fled the cold and convention and headed to San Francisco with $300 in his pocket, determined to make his mark. After a stint in the Tenderloin, he managed a varied career in insurance (establishing a 120-year sales record at Penn Mutual); real estate development; film; and visionary entrepreneurial ventures such as founding a company, Icon, that made fabulous art shoes.
Beverly Hills and Malibu were okay but he lived most happily in Topanga for more than 40 years, being with Susan, his wife, running thousands of miles in the hills, reading hundreds of works of history, planting 27 oak trees, walking eight beloved Great Danes, and generally being cantankerous—thoughtful but cantankerous—about politics and the state of the world.
On October 2, Peter fell in the street while walking Lincoln, leading to two 9-1-1 calls and cascading events that ended his life. A star in the Topanga firmament has gone out, but we—Susan and Dyan, his daughter, are keeping our eyes open for its reappearance in the night sky.