By Khalida Sarwari
Legend, icon and town historian–these are three of the attributes most commonly linked to Willys Peck. On April 16, the lifelong Saratogan died surrounded by his loved ones at the home he shared with his wife, Betty, for 61 years. He was 89.
Peck leaves behind an unmatched legacy as the unofficial town historian. But his title doesn’t tell it all. Everyone who knew Peck or knew of him–and really, who didn’t know Willys Peck?–remembers him also as a lawyer, newsman and playwright. He was also known to write a pretty mean headline.
His family will remember Peck as a loving father and devoted husband to his wife, Betty, who was with him until his final hours.
“He just closed his eyes … at the end of the day, he was gone,” Betty said.
That ended a rich and fulfilling life that began in 1923 and included many days of playing in orchard fields and picking apricots.
“The way he grew up was so inspiring,” said his daughter, Anna Rainville, an educational consultant and former teacher. It was from her father, she said, that she learned the importance of a town and community. “He just was continuously giving back to [Saratoga] and the town continuously gave back to him.”
Peck’s life included time in the army–in World War II, he helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp in Munich, Germany–and in the news business, working as a writer and editor for the Mercury News and later, a columnist for the Saratoga News. Peck received his journalism degree from UC-Berkeley and a law degree from Santa Clara University.
But, it was in Saratoga where Peck devoted most of his energies. He and Betty were instrumental in saving Saratoga from being annexed into San Jose through a ballot initiative in 1956.
Peck effectively kept the traditions and memories of the past alive to give the community a sense of identity, said his son, Bill, an educator at the Santa Clara County Office of Education.
“Rather than just being another suburb of San Jose, he helped define that and that is part of his legacy as I see it,” Bill said. He said he will remember his father as “very caring, loving and supportive.”
“Just a great dad,” he said.
The Pecks’ Craftsman home appears almost as a museum that reflects Peck’s hobbies, interests and personality. An envelope next to the sink in the kitchen has personal coupons Peck made for Betty. One, for example, reads: “Good for one year of dishwashing.”
The home includes an archive room and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves of Peck’s father’s books, and a back yard that boasts flower and herb gardens, a cage with doves, railroad tracks circling the house, as well as a half-scale replica of the C.P. Huntington.
“He’s an example of someone whose whole life was inspired by his childhood,” Rainville said. “As a child, he was really able to be a child and play. And he carried that playfulness, that magnetism, the gift of possibilities … always. He continued his creative play and that benefited everyone. He never grew old.”
Most impressive is Peck’s back yard amphitheater, where he hosted skits and plays, ranging from Romeo and Juliet to How Subdivided is My Valley.
Dale Bryant, executive editor of the Silicon Valley Community Newspapers, who baby-sat the Peck children when she was 13 and whose father, a schoolteacher, taught at the same school as Betty did, has fond and vivid memories of the Peck residence.
“The first time I went to their house, I was astounded. It was unlike any home I’d ever been in,” Bryant said. “More museum than home, and the yard like something out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was fitting, as that was one of the Shakespearean plays I read to Bill and Anna sitting in the back yard.”
Added Bryant, “In recent years, I attended his birthday parties in the Pecks’ back yard, and not surprisingly, it still looked exactly like something from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Called “Theatre on the Ground,” the venue hosted the likes of actress Annette Bening before she made it onto the big screen. Peck’s Hollywood connection doesn’t end there. He was good friends with Olivia de Havilland and her sister Joan Fontaine, who lived in the neighborhood when they were young. De Havilland was Peck’s babysitter before she went on stardom, most notably playing Melanie Hamilton in the 1939 film, Gone with the Wind. She also starred in a production of Alice in Wonderland as the lead character. Peck played the role of Puck.
“Olivia, a high school junior at the time, played Alice, and I, a fifth-grader, played a duck. I should say the duck, since it was a one-duck cast,” once wrote Peck in his column in the Saratoga News.
“He was able to be a part of everything that he felt was important in this world,” Betty said. “I just can’t tell you how fortunate I was: 61 years in this house, 61 years of magnificence. He was absolute perfection on every level.”
At the Peck household, the love and admiration for him is cross-generational. His granddaughter, Sarah Rainville, a nurse at San Francisco General Hospital, remembers an “incredible childhood” filled with “magic and celebrations.”
“Everything we ever wanted to do, he made it possible for us,” she said. “We wanted to read in the tree, he built us a treehouse. I feel lucky just to have grown up here.”
Family friend Mary Jane DiPiero said she will remember Peck’s thoughtfulness, his ability to accomplish many things in his life without much money, and his sense of humor.
“He was so funny,” said DiPiero. “He had this really clever wit.”
There aren’t many streets or corners in Saratoga that don’t carry some reminder or memory of Peck. To honor the man who left deep roots in the city he loved, Saratoga Mayor Jill Hunter will plant an oak tree at the city’s Arbor Day celebration on April 24.
“I always felt that Willys was the father of Saratoga,” she said. “We frequently called him the town historian, but to me he was the father of Saratoga. He loved to talk about Saratoga. I learned so much just listening to his tales and the things he talked about.”
Hunter met Peck in 1985 through Betty, who at the time was her son’s kindergarten teacher. Over the years, she was present at many of their gatherings. She said she last had a conversation with him at his home in February.
“He was in a hospital bed in the living room,” she recalled. “He read us a poem that he’d written. We all had lunch there. We just sat around his hospital bed. That was really the last time I talked to him at length.”
“He was a dear, sweet man who will be sorely missed,” Hunter added.
The Saratoga History Museum will host an exhibit, titled “Betty and Willys Peck: The Heart of Saratoga,” from May 31 to Oct. 27, with a reception from 1 to 3 p.m. on June 23.
The exhibit will be a tribute to a man that Peck’s former colleague Carl Heintze, a retired Mercury News science writer and former Saratoga News columnist, said served as a spokesperson for the city for much of his life.
“There’s really not going to be anybody who’s going to replace him,” said Heintze.
Peck is survived by his wife, Betty; his son, Bill, of Santa Clara; his daughter, Anna, of Saratoga; and two grandchildren, Merina and Sarah. A memorial service will be held on April 25 at the Saratoga Federated Church. According to an unfinished memoir Peck began writing in December, the Federated Church is where he attended Sunday School as a boy and where he briefly worked as an overnight furnace lighter.
The memorial service will begin at 1:30 p.m. and is open to the public.
