Photograph by Robert Scheer
Joanne and Fred Petersen have a lot in common, including church, community activities and friends.
By Mary Ann Cook
The secret of a successful marriage, he says, resides in two words, "Yes, dear." She says he is a wonderful husband, calls herself "the black velvet in their marriage against which he, the diamond, can shine." He says, "She genuinely cares about people. Wherever we go, someone will come up to her to tell her how much she has meant to them."
These two paragons are Betty and Willys Peck, a pair of Saratoga town treasures. She taught kindergarten in Saratoga schools for 30 years and third grade in Los Gatos schools for nine, then started the Easterbrook Farm School that evolved into today's Los Gatos- Saratoga Observation Nursery School.
Another project she founded was the Saratoga Community Garden, which blossomed for 15 years on Fruitvale Avenue. "Some 6,000 children visited that garden every year," she says wistfully.
Actually, a garden could serve as a metaphor for Betty Peck. She often dresses as though stepping straight out of the pages of A Child's Garden of Verses, as befits a kindergarten teacher, complete with flowing hair and medieval costume.
Willys Peck is a retired lawyer and not-so-retired newspaperman. He practiced law for 30 years and has been a reporter, city editor and copyeditor with the San Jose Mercury News off and on since 1951, and he writes a column for the Saratoga News.
He plays the part of the "Front Page" newspaperman to a T: He habitually wears a green eye shade and longs for, he claims, the return of the typewriter.
Having grown up in Saratoga and been blessed with a formidable fount of recollection, he serves as an unofficial town historian. Besides a roomful of Saratoga archives, his own artifacts include a printing press (his father owned the Saratoga newspaper for several years, later operated a print shop) and such bygone wonders as a stereopticon. He is adrift in railroad memorabilia, dirigibles, planes--presumably anything that moves.
He's writing a play to set the record straight about Casey Jones and has already written one about the history of dirigibles and the first airmail pilot. He is a walking lodestar of curiosity, hobbies and collections.
A mutual friend brought these two eclectics together. Pat Wallace, Betty's long-ago roommate, was an old friend of Willys'. But there was no danger of romance at that juncture, Betty says. "We were good friends, and he was younger. I was set on marrying someone older."
Her own demands about a marriage partner were so well defined that she had even written down the requirements, all 10 of them. Still, "I was about to tear up that list, thinking one person could never fulfill it, when I realized Willys had all those traits."
Willys, in the meantime, was sorting through his various girlfriends. After returning from Cleveland after one pursuit of the heart, he realized no one but Betty would do for him.
He proposed. She accepted at last, but with a codicil: a house. "I'll marry you if you get a house." Within a short time, he sent her a telegram. "Have house. Will you marry me?"
They've lived in that house ever since. Their 45th wedding anniversary was Feb. 3.
Betty's list of prerequisites included a family she could love and admire, the candidate had to be educated and have a love of learning, and he had to have the ability to work with his hands, a craftsman. But there were plenty of qualities she hadn't been astute enough to write down, she adds wryly, things even more necessary to a successful marriage, like a sense of humor, a trait Willys fortunately has in abundance.
"I can be so upset about something, and he will say something so exquisite to the moment that I will fall apart with laughter." And then there's no room left for anxiety. "His sense of humor has kept every moment alive."
She says they have almost never fought, can remember only two episodes. He protests, "You get annoyed with me sometimes."
A proposed class in French cooking in the '50s precipitated one of their only fights. She asked, as she remembers it, for $10 to attend; he said they couldn't afford it. "I cried so hard."
"I remember the crying," says Willys, "but I remember it as being a lot more money."
Betty Peck was a gourmet cook long before Julia Child became a household name. "I love to cook. I decorate the house. I have all my realms that I'm the queen of. We each have our own sphere, our own life, our own rights. Mine is the kitchen, the house, the gardens."
His is the finances, the maintenance, the parties, the plays, the collections, the train that circles the outside of their house. To say nothing of the community work: He is on five boards-- the Heritage Preservation Commission, the Saratoga Historical Foundation, the California History Club, West Valley Mission Foundation and the Phelan Library Committee.
He gives a yearly party for newspaper cronies to celebrate his birthday and his retirement(s) from the paper. He also produces theatricals and concerts on a regular basis. The Peck household is equipped with both an indoor and an outdoor stage. One of the earliest sendups was in '53, titled "How Subdivided Was My Valley: It Takes a Heap of Homes to Make a Living."
No wonder son Bill was a co-founder of VITA, a local theater group. Bill is a teacher at McKinnon School in San Jose, a school for handicapped children. Daughter Anna Rainville is a teacher as well.
Betty is usually involved in a cause. Right now it's saving the Claravale Dairy. "If someone needs help, she goes all out," says her husband.
"And he supports me in all this," she adds. "He puts things in perspective for me."
"Willys should give lessons to other men in how to make a marriage work, how to be a good husband," Betty Peck says. "He's such a wonderful husband, and these abilities should be passed on to others."
He tries to staunch this outpouring, saying he'll be forced to leave town once this embarrassment appears in print.
The Petersens: Cupid strikes more than once
When another couple asked them how long they'd been married, the Petersens, Joanne and Fred, answered 72 years. They neglected to add that that's the total for both of them and includes earlier 31-year spans with their first spouses.
Both were widowed after 31 years of marriage. Both describe their first marriages as decidedly happy ones. She knew his wife; he did business with her husband. But they didn't know each other, in spite of the fact that both families belonged to St. Andrews Episcopal Church and the Brookside Tennis Club.
When Peg Petersen died, Joanne Bassett wasn't able to go to the funeral, so she wrote Fred a note. Fred can still quote that note. It said, "If you start screaming in the night, I know the feeling. So call me."
Joanne had lost her husband, Clark, and she knew how hard it is to lose a love.
When they first got together, Fred and Joanne went to the Plumed Horse, which became a special-occasion spot for them. There was a snag that first time out. He ordered a nonalcoholic wine, since he had a physical the next day that required abstinence. But he didn't explain any of this to her.
"It was a cheap wine, and the waiter displayed it. He made such a big deal about it, it was embarrassing," he says. "I was afraid she'd think I was a cheapskate."
She did. And besides that, she thought, "Uh, oh, this isn't going to work. I really enjoy a good glass of wine with dinner."
But that first evening was hardly a portent. "I realized he had such a good sense of humor" that everything else became secondary, she says. Today she uses the word "generous" to describe him. "He spoils me," she says.
Fred was the first to think in terms of marriage. Joanne had a built-in resistance. "I had no intention of remarrying. I thought it would be disloyal to my husband, that it would dishonor him. I hadn't gotten to the point where I believed you could fall in love with more than one person."
It took about 18 months to convince her. That was a year and a half of "unbelievably romantic evenings, dinner at the Fairmont, the finest restaurants, flowers and gifts at the doorstep."
Fred proposed to Joanne after they had been seeing each other for some nine months.
No, she had to say.
"Well, would you even consider marrying me?" he persisted.
Yes, she said, that was a distinct possibility.
"OK. Just let me know when you're ready," he said.
She knew she needed some time for this major adjustment, and she felt they needed time to get to know each other. "We had such fabulous dates, I didn't know how it would be. We have to see each other in the real world, I insisted."
"So she asked me to fix her sprinkler system," he grins.
That must have worked out because it was close to his field: He was a horticulture consultant and president of the Soil and Plant Laboratory in Santa Clara, until his retirement a few years ago.
The children needed some time to adjust to the idea of a new mate for their parent, Fred relates. But that's about as awkward as it ever got in the Bassett-Petersen blending. They both say that the transition, though a major one, was smooth sailing from day one.
"The more time we spent together, the more natural it became," Fred says. "We've never had a cross word, I've never raised my voice. Have I? I don't think so."
"Well, we've had some disagreements."
"You haven't always seen the wisdom of my ways. I wondered how many racks of lamb I'd have to buy before she came around [to agreeing to marriage]."
"I wanted to be sure I could live with someone else," Joanne says.
But nine months more of rack of lamb after the proposal, she asked if he were still marriage-minded. He was. And so they were married in May of '91 with only their children in attendance. His four all live in Colorado and are avid skiers; her three are all in California. There is a total of 10 grandchildren.
"We probably live more independent lives than people who have been long-married," Joanne conjectures. "My first husband had a long illness, leukemia, and when I realized I'd be a young widow, I started building a strong community made up of women's groups," Joanne says. "And I enjoy those women so much I don't want to give any of them up."
Those groups include the Foothill Club, Tokalon, Town Club and PEO and the Altar Guild at St. Andrews, of which she's director. On Fred's agenda is the Rotary Club--he'll be community services director next year--and he works with the Homeless Care Force in San Jose, recently overseeing Operation Sleeping Bag.
"We have a lot in common--church, club, community," he says.
And in spite of originally not believing Cupid could strike the same heart more than once, now Joanne affirms, "It can happen again!"
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, February 12, 1997.
©1997 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.