Obituary of Owen Douglas Peterson

Owen Douglas Peterson passed away peacefully on October 6, 2024, at Capitol Hill Senior Living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Owen was born on September 12, 1948 in Laramie, Wyoming to Harold L. Peterson and Bernice A. Johnson Peterson. Owen grew up in Laramie, Wyoming, the sixth of seven children, in a book-filled academic environment, where drawing, painting, acting, and movie-going were his favorite leisure time activities. These interests continued throughout his life – almost to the end. From an early age, Owen showed creative ability in language and art. When he was less than five years old, Owen invented adjectives for the sounds he heard. For example, the noisy Plymouth owned by his grandfather was the “lent-lent car”, and the wagon pulled by his brothers over a rough sidewalk was the “bagga-bagga wagon”. His artistic ability continued to grow through grade school into high school. At the age of 16, Owen wrote a short story called “The Special”, which won $300 second prize out of several thousand entries, in the 1964 Seventeen Magazine short story contest. The story appeared in the book Prize Stories from Seventeen, 10 Years of the Best Fiction by America’s Talented Teen-agers. In 1966, Owen graduated from Laramie Senior High School, where he was vice president of his class and a member of the student council. In the year of his graduation, Owen took a summer job at a lumber yard in Saratoga, Wyoming. In addition to his chores at the lumber yard, he spent time drawing and painting still-lives of objects he saw there. He quickly built a reputation in Saratoga as an artist and otherwise clever fellow. Teenage women of the community bestowed upon Owen the nickname “Pierre of Saratoga”. Owen entered college at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, where he was an English major and a member of the honors program. He attended the university on a National Merit Scholarship. He was a cover artist and columnist for The Horse’s Mouth, a campus opinion magazine; a columnist for The Branding Iron, the student newspaper; and an editor of Gyre, a UW literary magazine. In 1970, Owen graduated from the University of Wyoming with a BA in English. He moved to Massachusetts and enrolled in Tufts University in the Boston area to earn his Master’s degree. His experience as a graduate student in Massachusetts was very educational: he learned that he loved English, but hated teaching! He received his MA in English, and that was enough. Eventually, Owen found his niche. In about 1977, he obtained a job at the Harvard University Extension School, and worked there for approximately 37 years! Ultimately, he became Assistant Director for the Extension School. Part of his job at this level consisted in helping pre-med students apply to medical school. Just the experience of sitting in Owen’s office during one of these interviews must have been rather puzzling to the pre-med student: every table and shelf in Owen’s office was covered with vases, busts, lamps, and other ceramic pieces made by Owen at the Harvard Ceramics Studio. He was also an avid “Jeopardy” fan, and did the NYT crossword puzzle, in ink! He retired from Harvard in 2014. Owen is preceded in death by 4 siblings: Carolyn, LeRoy, Dennis, Bruce; and survived by Roland and Aksel. We would like to thank: The caregivers at Capitol Hill Senior Living, especially those in Memory Care, who loved their “Harvard boy”. Wendy Rusin ACNP APRN. Hali Lynn RN, of Renew hospice. All those in Boston who helped Owen “age in place” until his move to Utah 3 years ago. Members of the Gleeful Choir, and the choir director Emily Christensen.