Robert Newton Peck
Robert Newton Peck (February 17, 1928Template:SndJune 23, 2020) was an American author who specialized in children's and young adult literature. His works include A Day No Pigs Would Die, Millie's Boy, and the Soup series.
Early life
Robert Newton Peck was reticent to discuss his early life, perhaps because the reality was in a number of respects different from statements he made and from the picture portrayed in his novels. Peck gave his birth date as February 17, 1928, but typically refused to specify where he was born.<ref>Peck had actually noted his birthplace, Weedville, New York, a section of Ticonderoga, in this first published book, The Happy Sadist.</ref> His place of birth was Ticonderoga, New York, as is recorded in state archives and published in the local newspaper.<ref name="Ticonderoga sentinel, February 23, 1928">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="New York State, Birth Index 1881-1942">Template:Cite web</ref> Peck's parents, Frank Haven Peck,<ref>See obituary in Ticonderoga Sentinel, October 24, 1949, page 4. A transcription can be found on the Find A Grave website.</ref> a widower, and Lucile Dornburgh,<ref>See obituary in Press-Republican (Plattsburgh, New York), October 9, 1976, page 6. A transcription can be found on the Find A Grave website.</ref> both of Ticonderoga, were married in 1923 in Glens Falls, New York. At his birth, Peck was named for his two deceased grandfathers, Robert Dornburgh,<ref>See obituary, Ticonderoga Sentinel January 5, 1911, page 1. A transcription can be found on the Find A Grave website.</ref> a prominent attorney, and Newton Peck,<ref>See obituary, Ticonderoga Sentinel March 28, 1912, page 1. A transcription can be found on the Find A Grave website.</ref> who was trained as a medical doctor but later became a clothing merchant.<ref name="New York County Marriages, 1847-1848;1908-1936">Template:Cite web</ref> At the time of Peck's birth, the family consisted of Peck, his parents, and two half sisters, Marian and Molly, who were several years older than Robert. (Two older half sisters had married before Robert was born.) By the fall of 1930, however, his mother had filed for a separation, though both parents continued to live in Ticonderoga; a divorce was granted in early 1933. From about the age of two, Peck and his mother lived in the home of her deceased parents, along with her sister, Caroline ("Carrie") Dornburgh. Lucile was the homemaker, and Carrie worked as a business secretary and stenographer.<ref name="1930census">Template:Cite census</ref> During the early years of the Great Depression, Lucile and Caroline attempted to sell the family home, not a "farm" but a town lot with two adjoining half lots (about a third of an acre).<ref>Federal census data for 1930 and 1940 indicate that neither of Peck's parent's homes was a farm.</ref> They were apparently unsuccessful, for the property was foreclosed upon by the Ticonderoga National Bank six years later, when Robert was nine, though the family continued on in the home as renters for about four more years.<ref name="Ticonderoga sentinel, March 18, 1937">Template:Cite web</ref> When Peck was about thirteen, he and his mother moved to Glens Falls, New York, for a couple years before returning to Ticonderoga.
Peck indicated that he was born and grew up in Vermont, as in his semi-autobiographical novels. Though Peck and his mother briefly lived in Bennington, Vermont, before he entered the military, the only verified family connection to Vermont comes through his paternal grandparents, who died before Peck was born. The grandfather, Newton Peck, was originally from Cornwall, Vermont, and had moved to Ticonderoga and married there shortly before the 1875 birth of Peck's father. Newton Peck's wife, Mary Haven, had family connections to Shoreham, Vermont, adjacent to Cornwall and directly across Lake Champlain from Ticonderoga.<ref>Cornwall and Shoreham are both settings in Peck's historical novel Millie's Boy. One of the characters in the novel, an Indian named Sabatis, is based on Peck's great-great uncle, the well-known Abenaki Adirondack guide and boatbuilder Mitchell Sabattis. See Template:Cite web, and Sabattis's obituary in The Elizabethtown Post September 27, 1900. A transcription can be found on the Find A Grave website.</ref> It was not only his grandparents that Peck did not know; he claimed later in life that he had never known his father,<ref name="SentinelObit" /> who died when Robert was twelve. In contrast to the narrative in the semi-autobiographical A Day No Pigs Would Die, Peck's father was not a pig farmer but had been proprietor of his father's clothing business and during Robert's childhood he was an insurance and real estate agent.<ref>Census data from 1900 to 1930 indicate that Frank Peck had had two years of high school education and had worked variously as a clerk in a jewelry business, as a land surveyor, in Ticonderoga's paper pulp mill, as a clothing merchant, and as an insurance and real estate agent. Lucile Peck had two years of college education.</ref> Robert's father's home at that time had belonged to Newton Peck, the doctor and merchant, and had previously been the property of Newton Peck's father-in-law, who had been a cooper. As with Peck's mother's family home, his father's was also lost to a bank foreclosure during the Great Depression. Whether there was involvement in Shakerism in Peck's family, as indicated in A Day No Pigs Would Die, is unlikely. There were no Shaker communities in Vermont, nor in Ticonderoga, and Peck has been criticized for his inaccurate depiction of Shaker belief and practice (for example, in reality Shakers were unmarried, held their property communally, and did not keep pets).<ref name="Robert Newton Peck and Shaker Beliefs: A Day the Truth Would Die">Template:Cite journal</ref> The obituaries of his parents and grandparents instead indicate family ties to Congregationalism and Methodism.
Education, military service, and early career
Peck attended Weedville School (grades 1–4), and Central School (grades 5–7), both in Ticonderoga.<ref>These schools were not one-room country schools as in Peck's novels, but typical brick structures on major streets in town. In the Weedville School a Miss Winifred Kelly taught second grade for nearly 50 years, and was likely the inspiration for "Miss Kelly" in Peck's Soup series.</ref><ref name="Ticonderoga sentinel, April 21, 1932">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Ticonderoga Schools' History- Part Two">Template:Cite web</ref> He attended high school at Ticonderoga High School, also in Glens Falls, New York, and in Bennington, Vermont, where he graduated in June 1945. From Bennington, he was accepted for military induction at age 17 following his high school graduation. World War II was then still in progress, but the surrenders of Germany and Japan had both occurred by the time Peck was out of training. Fighting was still taking place, nevertheless, and he served as a private from 1945 to 1947 in the U.S. Army, including time in the 88th Infantry Division and as a machine-gunner in Italy defending the Morgan Line.<ref>Peck, Robert Newton. Weeds in Bloom: Autobiography of an Ordinary Man. (2005), p. 92, Random House, New York. Template:ISBN</ref> After his term of duty was completed and he had returned home, Peck took on a variety of jobs. He worked in a saw mill, did farm work, worked in a lumber camp, in a paper pulp mill, and found jobs playing piano. Peck entered Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, in the fall of 1948. He spent a year there, including a period of work-study in Albany, New York. The following year, he transferred to Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, after a football scout, apparently interested in Peck due to his size (6' 4"), urged him to apply for educational funding through the G.I. Bill.<ref>Peck, Robert Newton. Weeds in Bloom: Autobiography of an Ordinary Man. (2005), pp. 116-117, Random House, New York. Template:ISBN</ref> At Rollins, in addition to his academics, Peck kept busy with sports, drama, playing piano, and writing. He was known in school for his sense of humor in class and his love of horses. He graduated with a B.A. in English in 1953, and the next fall he entered Cornell Law School. He did not complete his studies, however, due to the lack of financial resources. Following his time at Cornell, Peck tried his hand at several creative endeavors (writing songs and jingles, comedy) until settling into the field of advertising in New York City in 1954.<ref name="SentinelObit" /><ref>Peck, Robert Newton. Weeds in Bloom: Autobiography of an Ordinary Man. (2005), pp. 123-124, Random House, New York. Template:ISBN</ref> He worked in advertising with Parents Magazine in New York, with Curtis Publishing Company in Cleveland, Ohio, and with American Home Products in New York City, commuting from Darien, Connecticut. He had a record album of satirical music released in 1957, Moth in a Gray Flannel Suit. He left advertising in 1974, following the success of his first novels, and in 1977 Peck and his family moved to Florida where he devoted more time to writing.
Writing
Peck was steered toward writing by one of his mentors at Rollins College, Edwin Granberry, after Granberry read some of Peck's written work.<ref name="SentinelObit" /><ref>Peck, Robert Newton. Weeds in Bloom: Autobiography of an Ordinary Man. (2005), pp. 119-124, Random House, New York. Template:ISBN</ref> He published his first novel, A Day No Pigs Would Die, in 1972 at the age of 44. The book, which became a best seller, was written while Peck commuted on the train between his home in Connecticut and his job in New York City. He had published a much less well-known book, The Happy Sadist, ten years earlier, a satirical work which he called "a sort of unprofound autobiography". His body of work comprises nearly sixty children's and young adult titles, six nonfiction works, thirty-five songs, three television specials, and over one hundred poems. His Soup series, another semi-autobiographical work, was immensely popular and ran to nearly twenty separate titles and was adapted for television in 1978. In 2005 he published an atypical autobiography, Weeds in Bloom: Autobiography of an Ordinary Man, composed of a series of vignettes of various times, places, and people in his life. Peck also authored three books on the craft of writing as well as giving workshops and occasionally teaching writing both at Rollins and at Manhattanville College. He served as Director of Rollins College Writers Conference, 1977–1982.<ref name="Peck's Work">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Please, Tell Me The Secret: Revisiting Robert Newton Peck">Template:Cite journal</ref> Peck's novels won numerous awards throughout his career, including the Mark Twain Readers Award in 1981 for Soup for President, and inclusion in the American Library Association's Best Books for Young Adults for A Day No Pigs Would Die in 1973.<ref name="ALA Book Awards: Best Books for Young Adults">Template:Cite web</ref> While A Day No Pigs Would Die is certainly Peck's most famous work, and has been published in over 40 countries, it has also been the target of censorship due to some of its graphic descriptions. Rights to the book, as well as his novel Millie's Boy, were purchased by Twentieth Century Fox for film adaptations, but were never produced.
Personal life
In 1958 Peck married Dorothy Anne Houston, a Columbia University graduate and librarian, and they were the parents of two children: Christopher who was born in 1968, and Anne born in 1971. Christopher died July 31, 2011, at the age of 43. <ref>obituary, located at http://baldwin.tributes.com/obituary/print/92055061</ref> Fred Rogers, a classmate at Rollins College, was an usher at the Peck's wedding and, according to Peck, the godfather to his children.<ref>See The Pittsburgh Press, April 20, 1958</ref><ref name="AboutPeck">Template:Cite web</ref> Robert and Dorothy divorced in 1994. His second marriage was to Sharon "Sam" Michael in 1995.<ref name="SentinelObit">Template:Cite web</ref> <ref>see his son's obituary, located at http://baldwin.tributes.com/obituary/print/92055061</ref>
In 1984, Peck was sued by Mary Jo Wardlaw, an Erskine College student, for outrageous conduct causing severe emotional distress and slander, for comments he made during a convocation speech at the college.<ref name="SlanderSuit" /> The day before the speech, Wardlaw had failed to pick up Peck from the airport.<ref name="SlanderSuit" /> Upset at having been made to wait, Peck pointed to Wardlaw during his speech and referred to her as "Mary Jo Warthog" or "Warthog."<ref name="SlanderSuit" /> As the court noted,
- He likened her to a fictitious character in his books called "Janice," who he said was the "bully of his childhood." He described "Janice" as "built like a garbage truck" with "fists like cannonballs" and said she walked hunched over with her fists dangling before her so her left arm swung over her left leg and her right arm swung over her right leg. He said Mary Jo Wardlaw was late to the airport because she walked like "Janice." He then mimicked Wardlaw's supposed walk by walking across the stage in front of the convocation audience in an ape-like position.<ref name="SlanderSuit" />
A South Carolina appeals court upheld a $24,000 jury verdict against Peck on the theory that when Peck cast aspersions upon Wardlaw's chastity, his public remarks were slanderous per se.<ref name="SlanderSuit">Template:Cite web</ref>
In 1993, Peck was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx, but overcame the disease.<ref name="Peck's Home Page">Template:Cite web</ref> Peck lived with his wife in Longwood, Florida, and died there in 2020.<ref name="SentinelObit" />