C. D. Peterson

People write memoirs and blog out of need; perhaps a need for therapy, a need to quench a vanity or to satisfy an adoring public. My need is to create a legacy; not a personal legacy for my descendants, but a legacy for a small cohort of a special generation. Any urgency detected in my writing is driven by my awareness that I am among “the last ones.”

Coming of age in the 1940s and early 50s, we are the last ones who personally experienced the scarcity of the depression, the patriotism during World War II and the exuberance in that brief, post-war period when we felt safe and when the middle class was born.

After the war, with the GI Bill, VA loans, and fully stocked store shelves, the country was all about getting back to normal. But for some, normal was gone. My memoir is about my New England farm family and about how normal evaded our reach

My blog works to insure that more will remember, some will learn, and none may forget those years.

Critics propound incompatible rules about memoirs: you can exaggerate, you can conflate, you can transpose, you can change names and places, you can omit, you can time jump, you can forget, you can even imagine and suppose, but you can’t lie, except for narrative purposes.

Though many of these events are more than 70 years gone, I have followed those rules.

Personal/Credentials

Married for more than 50 years, I am the proud father of three fascinating children. Raised on my family’s dairy farm, I am an MIT graduate, a former Navy pilot, and a dedicated fly fisherman. My business career includes many years with International Paper Company and then with Danbury Hospital where I retired as Vice President of Planning and Marketing.

I have written five books on business subjects and a full scale history of Danbury Hospital. I have also written several pieces about fly fishing, a published poem and an award winning song. Recently, essays on which my proposed book is based have been published in several newspapers.

You can visit me on GoodReads :

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17799773.C_D_Peterson