Robert A. Peattie Jr.
Former Bridgehampton resident Robert A. Peattie Jr. died on January 10 of complications from pneumonia. He was 93.
Mr. Peattie was born April 14, 1919, and raised in Manhattan. He was the son of Robert A. Peattie, a lawyer, and Anne Peattie, and older brother of James Ellis Forrestall Peattie, who predeceased him. He enrolled at Manhattanville College and subsequently graduated from Yale. After three years in the U.S. Army, he joined AT&T in 1946 and began a career that focused on market research specializing in travel and resort development. He married Nancy Hyatt in October, 1953, and the couple settled in Greenwich, where they raised their children, Rob, Andrea and Bill. Mr. Peattie later joined American Airlines, and then opened his own firm, Travel Research International. He loved travel, and his work took him around the globe, including parts of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe, frequently accompanied by Nancy. On one trip in 1984, Mr. Peattie and his wife awoke well before daybreak to climb Mt. Sinai. He retired in 1985.
A lifelong Democrat, Mr. Peattie was passionate about politics at both the local and national level. He worked on various Kennedy campaigns, and was a key advisor to Ruth Sims, in her landmark victory as First Selectwoman of Greenwich in 1977 after two recounts and an eventual re-vote. At the time, registered Republicans outnumbered registered Democrats by nearly 3-1 in Greenwich. He had a particular interest in civil rights, and worked to help those less fortunate have educational opportunities. He was a voracious reader, and had an insatiable appetite for accurate information. Even in his later years he was always conversant on current events and developments in his primary areas of interest, which also included sports and American history, especially the Civil War. Despite being a New Yorker, he was an avid Red Sox fan, having become enamored of Ted Williams when the Red Sox played an exhibition at Yale during Mr. Peattie’s time there. As one friend said on hearing of his death, “He was such a gentleman and the soul of humility, possessed of such a brilliant mind and voice of reason … he will be missed and so will that card-catalogue brain of his that had such an incredible variety of facts at his bidding.”
Mr. Peattie and his wife spent nearly 20 years in Bridgehampton; he moved to Stamford after his wife’s death in 2003.
In addition to his three children, he is survived by a daughter-in-law, Cathy Mulrow-Peattie; and one grandson, Jack Peattie.
Donations in his memory can be made to The Fresh Air Fund, www.freshair.org, or Room to Read, www.roomtoread.org.
on Jan 25, 2013