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<em>William Oliver Peak III</em>, eldest of four sons of William Oliver Jr. and Ella W. Peak, was born on 18 November 1918 at Munson, Florida, a logging camp no longer on the map in Santa Rosa County. He grew up in hard circumstances, earned everything he ever got, was rewarded with a loving wife and four daughters, and lived a life of exemplary service to his country in peace and war. Having received many honors and having survived many perils, Bill Peak retired from the Army in 1971 secure in the particular blessings of family and friends and the admiration and respect of all who knew him. He and Bernice settled in Grand Island, Nebraska. There in their newly-built home on the night of 9 September 1972, in a spasm of senseless, unexplained violence by a person or persons unknown. Bill and daughter Barbara were shot to death, and Bernice fatally wounded.</div>
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They are survived, in the immediate family, by daughters Kathleen (Mrs. Craig Dunbar) of Arlington, Virginia; Patricia (Mrs. Stephen Klintberg), also of Arlington; and Elizabeth, at the University of California (Santa Barbara); and by a granddaughter, Barbara Elizabeth Dunbar, born 18 November 1972. Bill's father and step-mother, Carolyn V. Peak, now of Carson, California, survive; also a step-sister, Mrs. Mildred Bickers of Hawthorne, California, and Bill’s brothers: Frank, of Norfolk, Virginia; James of Rock Island, Illinois; and Donald, of Moline, Illinois, and their families. Of Bernices family, her father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. H. H. Allen, of Crand Island, Nebraska, survive, and Bernice’s brothers: Bruce, of North Platte, and Robert, of Hastings, Nebraska, and their families.</div>
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A brief account of the tragedy and of the intennents that followed is contained in the class column in <em>ASSEMBLY</em> for March 1973, and need not be restated here in the same detail. It can be said that by mid-May 1973, despite intense pressures by family survivors and the personal intervention of the governor of Nebraska in the investigation, the case has still not been solved. Our purpose here, however, is to review and memorialize the life rather than the death of Bill Peak.</div>
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Bill’s brother, Frank, (Lieutenant Commander, USN Retired) has described the early years this way: "We moved several times when we were small. Our mother died in 1927, and we were raised by a grandmother, an assortment of housekeepers, and a stepmother until 1935. Bill attended public school in Aledo, Illinois, until his junior year. Then, because of our Dad’s injuries, we went to live with an aunt in Lexington, Kentucky, and Bill finished high school there in 1936. He was always an able student, easily maintaining a position in the top three per cent of his class. He participated in all sports and was the high school ping-pong champion. After high school, he managed to get in one year at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky. Then he worked as a house painter in Aledo and Rock Island. He was driving a cab in Rock Island just before he joined the Army.”</div>
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Bill enlisted in the Army on 1 July 1938 at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, and served in the 80th Field Artillery. He gained admission to West Point the hard way—as a Regular Army competitor. Having qualified for the United States Military Academy Preparatory School at Fort Omaha, he attended the course there from 10 September 1939 to 11 March 1940, took the entrance examinations and returned to Des Moines. He won his appointment, was discharged on 30 June 1940, and sworn in as a cadet along with the rest of us the following day. After Beast Barracks, he was assigned to old “M" Co.— where he fell in with R.C. Grady and Dick Snyder as roommates.</div>
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Bill’s cadet years, in his role as the “other wife” of Ducrot Pepys, are immortalized in Academy lore. After Bill’s death, Grady reflected on those times again:</div>
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“Bill’s young years had put strength in him, given him a wry sense of ridiculous humor, and maybe most important, afforded him a base of experience upon which his own clear judgement could put a solid structure of honor and integrity. Not a few of the rest of us, from time to time, had to ask the Honor Representative what was right in this case or that. Bill—with reason-had no need. A better companion and cadet wife never was.”</div>
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During those years a young lady named Bernice Allen of Lincoln, Nebraska, visited West Point a number of times as the guest of her college roommate, Barbara Jones— the future Mrs. Grady. On her first visit, Bernice met Bill. Time passed, the class graduated on 1 July 1943, and two days later Bill and Bernice—who became known in the Army as “Beenie”—married.</div>
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Today’s television often shows a flickering sequence of scenes, then fixes them, for the overall view, in a montage of separate segments on the screen. We can do the same for Bill and Beenie. The kaleidoscopic sequences flash by, the montage is invoked in memory, and the whole is more than the sum of its parts. To their families, friends, and those who lived the life—it will have its special meanings.</div>
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After graduation from the United States Military Academy, Bill attended the Infantry Officers Basic Course at Fort Benning. He was then assigned to the 326th Glider Infantry Battalion of the 13th Airborne Division, and went through Glider and Parachute school in 1944. As a company commander, he went with the division to the European Theater in January 1945, and returned with it in August. Realizing where the future priorities would lie, Bill volunteered for the new four-year Russian language and area studies program. This decision set the principal direction of his career from then onwards. After about a year at Columbia University, Bill and Beenie joined Detachment “R” at Regensburg, Germany, where intensive studies continued for the next two and one-half years. This was the first class in the Russian Foreign Area Specialist Training Program.</div>
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Returning to the States, Bill was assigned to his first Pentagon tour as a Soviet affairs specialist in the office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, G2 (later OACSI).</div>
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Bill and Beenie lost their firstborn, a son, William IV, in infancy, but by 1952 the family included three daughters—Kathleen, Patricia, and Elizabeth; and Bill had been promoted to major. He and Beenie again went through the familiar Army ritual of packing, shipping, and moving, and spent the next year at Fort Benning in the Infantry Officers Advanced Course. The Peaks returned to Europe in May 1953, where Bill served two years with the United States Army, Europe (USAREUR/G2) at Heidelberg and one with the 41st Armored Infantry Battalion at Mannheim. The next phase, 1956-57, was attendance at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, where contacts with many classmates were renewed, then back to the Pentagon from 1957-60 for another tour as a Soviet specialist in OACSI. Barbara was born in 1958,<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>and Bill made Lieutenant Colonel in 1959.</div>
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After a year in Korea as Exec and Deputy Commanding Officer of the 1st Battle Group, 5th Cavalry, Bill rejoined the family and packed off to Carlisle for the Army War College year of 1961-62, during which he also earned his Master of Arts from George Washington University. During the next two years, Bill served in staff and command positions at the Special Warfare Center, Fort Bragg, and returned again to Washington in 1964-and again to estimates and analysis of Soviet/East European affairs, but now in the new Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). He and Beenie bought a home in Fairfax-next door to Bill and Cecile Cover. Soon afterwards Beenie went to work as a real estate sales agent, in a firm whose sales manager was Bill Malone. Bill Peak was promoted to Colonel on 20 October 1965. Having transferred earlier to the Military Intelligence Branch, he served from November 1966 through October 1967 as Commanding Officer consecutively of the 149th and 525th Military Intelligence Groups in Vietnam.</div>
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He was then again assigned to DIA, in a senior managerial position. The years were spinning by now. Kathleen graduated from George Washington in January 1968 and was married in February. Patricia was at the University of Nebraska. In June 1969, Bill and Beenie, with Elizabeth and Barbara, returned to Europe and joined the American Embassy staff in Budapest, Hungary, where Bill was Defense and Army Attache for two colorful and eventful years. For outstanding performance of this duty, he received the Legion of Merit, as he had previously received the same award for his service in Vietnam.</div>
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On 31 July 1971, at Fort Myer, Virginia, Bill retired from the Army. He and Beenie then moved to Grand Island, Nebraska, where he became Comptroller and Vice President of Allen Drugs, Inc., the family firm built up by Beenie's father and brothers, with stores in Grand Island, North Platte, and Hastings. In the short time remaining to him, Bill made his mark in business, as he had long since done in the Army. Patricia graduated, and, later, was married in December 1971. Elizabeth was progressing well at the University, and Barbara in high school. The new home, a lakeside property, was built to Bill and Beenie’s specifications. Surely this was snug harbor, and all storms weathered. Until 9 September 1972.</div>
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Take your <em>HOWITZER</em> for June 1943 and turn to page 424. Look at the picture if you will, for a moment—but in particular look at these words, none truer ever written in a light-hearted <em>HOWITZER</em> sketch: ‘The Army is getting something it can really use...” It did. General Westmoreland wrote to Bill on 8 October 1971: “Throughout your career, your efforts consistently advanced the ability of the Army to promote the security of our Country.” The signatures on the letters of commendation in Bill’s file, from the time of his first Pentagon tour, are a roster of familiar names of distinguished commanders and Intelligence and Operations chiefs in the critical years of 1950-1971. For example, Mr. Sherman Kent, then Head of the Board of National Estimates of the United States Intelligence Community attested to Bill’s outstanding performance in an unusual letter in July 1960. Privately, Mr. Kent has stated: "When Bill began to talk, everyone else began to listen. He was one of the best staff estimates officers I have ever known.”</div>
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Upon learning of the tragedy of 9 September 1972, Lieutenant General Joseph F. Carroll, United States Air Force (Retired), the first director of DIA, described Bill as “an invaluable asset to the Intelligence Community not only because of his competence and dedication, but also because of his warm and engaging personality. He was a superb intelligence officer, an outstanding and courageous soldier, and, as a man, he personified all that is good in the accolade ‘An officer and gentleman.’” Lieutenant General Alva R. Fitch, United States Army (Retired), former Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence and former Deputy Director of DIA, wrote: “For over twenty years I knew Bill Peak well. In the Russian field he was a mainstay of Army and Defense Intelligence. He was known and respected throughout the Intelligence Community. The specialist can become typed, to the detriment of the broader interest of the Army. Not Bill. He always sought opportunities to return to troops. He was both an expert and a soldier’s soldier.” Another former Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Lieutenant General William P. Yarborough, United States Army (Retired), is perhaps better known as “father” of the Special Warfare Center, and it was in this capacity that he knew Bill best: “He was a gentleman in every sense of the word and a professional soldier of the highest quality. His personal life was unimpeachable, and Beenie was a perfect companion to him. She radiated warmth, charm, and good breeding. During the formative years of the Special Warfare Center, we were most fortunate in having Bill as liaison and interpreter between the school and the academicians of the civilian echelons concerned. The security of the United States was a sacred trust with him.”</div>
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Out of some dark, irrational malaise, a hand flailed and struck Bill down; but his life shines through that darkness. In all mythology and legend, it is said, there is some element of original reality. Lately, the concept of the American Dream has taken a lot of abuse from those who deprecate it as mythology without value or even existence. How about this scenario, then, for a true modem personification? “Born in a logging camp, house painter, cab driver, soldier, scholar, father, troop leader, expert specialist, business executive, friend and classmate, and always—gentleman.” Those who deprecate might well look at Bill Peak’s life—then very quietly ask themselves if they have what it takes to match it...</div>
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Over in Spain, an old “M” Co. typewriter clattered again and the first biographer rightly has the last rough words:</div>
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"Well, he’s dead. Those behind have the comfort of having known him alive to keep as they should keep a lucky piece. It’ll bring them more than luck. It’ll give them strength, and it can’t be lost.</div>
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“The friends who mourn him will remember a fine, unflappable brother-at-arms who had the ability to laugh at the hard right time, to prod when prodding was needed, and to go out in front and walk when that was called for.</div>
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“Words are marks on paper. Bill’s life was marks on people. Good, solid lasting marks, with people happier for them.”</div>
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<em>—RCC and WWC</em></div>
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