Robert Marshall shares his thoughts about Peder’s life as a dear close friend of over 40 years.

This is very hard to accept.

We're all sad to lose a man of such talent, such capability and charm, a man of such intelligence and creativity, an intrepid traveler and adventurer possessed of panache, savoir faire, and sang froid. So many beautiful traits made up his character. We’re all sad that he should be so suddenly taken away before he'd achieved many of the things he’d planned, and before we had enough fun with him.

A year and a half ago, after the death of my brother, I specifically instructed Peder not to predecease me. I had fervently wished that I would not have to live this day.

I loved Peder like a brother for 46 years.

We met when I was 16 and decided to be a painter, and I saw a painting in progress in a ground floor apartment of that brick tenement off Main Street in Durham. An artist! I felt oompelled to introduce myself, but as I approached the door I remembered that I was a high school lad and the people inside were oollege students, and I was overcome with shyness and turned away, but the floor happened to be very squeaky, and Peder opened the door to see who was pussyfooting in the hallway, and invited me in.

Soon I was sharing a tiny studio space over Grant’s Store on Main Street with Peter Warren, later displaced by Moody. I was anticipating that the two Peters and I would go on to enjoy a basically post impressionist lifestyle and eventual fame.

Meanwhile my parents adopted Peter and Khin, and our house became a kind of annex for Peder and Khin when they lived at Forest Park. The morning Neal was born, Peder called for a ride, being carless, but both parents were out in their cars, and Khin rode in a snowstorm in a police car to Exeter Hospital.

Peder was married but not entirely domesticated. A woman once said during Peder’s salad days, “You don’t marry Peder.” But women are brave, and gave Peder the children and grandchildren whom he loved so much. And may you - Neil, Anne, Lisa, Banjoh - be greatly comforted by the affection and esteem in which Peder was held by his many friends.
In the years that followed I hobnobbed with Peder in Boston, Chicago, Mexico, Iowa, New York, NH. For a while Peder considered me his bridge to the hippy culture. I seem to recall tripping together one night, perhaps later getting in my car and driving at 100. Or was that another occasion?

Eventually we became something like The Everly Brothers -- many of the women who had inspired them had decamped, but they’re still together.

We often discussed opening a diner in our sunset years, Bob and Pete’s, breakfast and light lunch, but we realized it wouldn’t have worked once we both went deaf. We saw each other usually weekly for the last several years, except when Peder was abroad, but communication was increasingly a matter of guesswork.

The man I knew at 21 and the man I knew at 67 was the same man. Some thought he seemed a bit diabolical in his youth, but later his visage was overtaken by benevolence,the Ben Franklin look he had when his hair was long and he wore spectacles, then we had the Al Pacino raising of the eyebrows, possibly related to his deafness.

Apart from his inclination for romance, when on occasion he may have been more successful than was good for him, Peder was entirely a Romantic.

He was a true Romantic, and throughout he was true to himself and his vocation. It he had garnered all the hallmarks of success, it would have been merely icing on the cake for him, for Peder was a man of imagination who carried his riches within himself.

As a Romantic he may have been sometimes impractical in his conceptions and plans, but Peder lived beautifully, always following a vision that had the appeal of the heroic, the adventurous, the exotic, the idealized.

Let’s face it, the cliche “incurable romantic” does spring to the lips.

Small wonder he was greatly beloved by all of us.

He would not have been nearly as bitter at having his life cut short as he would have been grateful for his life, as we now must be.

Heaven knows what the next sharings will bring in Peder’s name.