Today's Featured Biography

 
Richard Peters

Update 7/20/18
Andre and I were married December 2 of 1978. We will be celebrating our 40th anniversary this year. We have two boys. Brandon who is a neurologist for Virginia Mason in Seattle. He specializes in sleep medicine. He Has been writing for about.com for 12 years. He published his first book this year “insomnia solved”. Having issues sleeping? google him for some great tips.

Our youngest son Derrick works on the Microsoft campus as a consultant. He enjoys the mountains and any place that has an adventure.. He has summited Mt.Hood and Mt. St Helens. He now is working on the five major mountains in Washington this year. He plans to Summit Reiner tomorrow 7/21/18.

We have lived in the Wenatchee Valley (Washington)since 1992.

Andre is in real estate broker and works for Coldwell Banker Levine.

After 33 years manufacturing I now work in the public sector for the state of Washington at Wenatchee Valley College as Director of facilities and capital projects. I enjoy giving back to my Alma martyr and look forward to the capital projects which will move this campus forward.

Andre and have a home on the Columbia River. We enjoy fishing camping and hunting whenever we can. No grandchildren in our near future but looking for that chapter in our lives at some point.

I hope all is well with my classmates of Worthington high school and go Trojans!!! We look forward to seeing you all in September!
All the best,
Rich



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Aloha from Maui. No we are not residents of the islands (yet) André and I are celebrating 30 years together! High school Wow it seems like yesterday. So many core values and experiences that will shape your life come from those days. I had no plans to go to college and I was going to get out of high school as soon as I could and work my way up in a company. Who needs more schooling? I graduated mid term after a very demanding first semester of my senior year. I took all the PE and art classes I could. I still have a love for the arts but I was looking for an easy 2 quarters and I am out of here! Looking back I missed the high school sports, the real classes that would stretch my scholastic mind and missed my friends in high school before I needed to. The latter at times ways on my mind when I think of friends and class mates that we have lost. Most were friends but none as close as Gary Radeke. I kept track of Gary through his dad and still talk to his dad on a regular basis. The lesson here is to stay in touch with those from life. You really don’t know when the last time you see them may be the last time you will see them. My interest in high school was mathematics; shop classes, and always loved the sports regardless of what they were. Thinking of high school did they ever catch those guys that filled the courtyard with leaves? They had to been athletes to pull that one off. Hmmm you see I missed out on the last 6 months of that fun. Even though I missed out on much of that fun I met an incredible girl from Round Lake Andre’ Becker as I was working at the Round lake CO-OP. Andre` and I have been together for a little over thirty years and it seems like yesterday. We will celebrate being married thirty years on December 2nd 2008. We have two sons Brandon (27) who will be graduating from Oregon Health Science medical school in June. He is very intelligent and will give back to the medical field in incredible ways over his career. Derrick (25) is working in sales and marketing for Future Brands in the Seattle area. He was the athlete of the family and made his mark in several sports through his high school years. He decided that he wanted to play golf as he got tired of waiting to be the closing pitcher in baseball. He carried a 2 handicap with a 22 year old set of Austad golf clubs! I tried and tried to get him to upgrade but he is also the strong headed young man! We have no grand children or any on the horizon yet! Parents… My mother lives in the Worthington area again since the death of my hero/friend/father on leap day 2000. The loss of my father had the level of hurt you wish you can avoid during life. I miss my dad everyday but am so thankful I had him as a close friend as long as I did. My dad taught me to be compassionate for the less fortunate, to be thankful for what you have, and to have fun in life. Those of you who have ever been with me leaving our home will remember my dad saying “Be careful…Have fun”. These are still good words to live by. I have sisters in Nicollet, South Carolina, and in Worthington. My brothers are in Nebraska and California. You may be interested to know my sister Gail is the high school art teacher! She is great with the kids which is a challenge these days. Andre’s Mom still lives on the farm west of Worthington. Her Dad is in a nursing home suffering from Alzheimer’s. I had jobs at Nobles County Co-op and Buru Industries in Round Lake before going to work with André’s dad Paul Becker. I thought I knew what work was before I met Paul. How much tougher can it be then wind sprints at the end of practice really??? Well I found out that when you would like the work day to end sometimes it may just be beginning. I loved farming, working the 1200 acres, caring for 2400 head of hogs and 500 head plus cattle. I have a sincere appreciation for those class mates of ours that did this while going to school. Andre` and I were married in December 1978 and I would work as a partner in the operation until 1982. Brandon was a little over a year old when I realized that he was sleeping when I left in the morning, was sleeping when I got done at night and I was spending quality time with him every third Sunday afternoon. This time was not a given during harvest. I made the hardest decision in my life when we decided that we needed to do something different. I knew how important my dad was to me as a child and how much it meant to me to spend time with my dad…how could I not give the same quality time for my family! I went to work for Bedford Industries in 1982. I have been in the plastics industry in one form or another ever since. I have worked positions of operator, maintenance, maintenance supervisor, maintenance engineer, and have been plant manager for the last 14 years in Wenatchee. I currently have responsibilities for all aspects of the west coast operations that employees 160. So how do you get there with a high school education you ask? Well you don’t in most cases. While working for Bedford they sold the plastics division to Amoco Foam. It was clear to me early on that if you wanted to move up in Amoco you needed the schooling. In 1988 I went back to college taking late afternoon and night classes at Sioux Falls College. I focused this schooling on mathematics and any classes that would help me as I wanted to go into mechanical engineering and plant engineering. I was in the middle of differential equations and probability& statistics when Dolco packaging began to lure me away from Sioux Falls to work in Washington State. Our Family made the decision to give it a try out in the great Northwest for two years. Well when we had our family discussion about if we wanted to go home to the Midwest or try another part of the country it was unanimous! We live in a beautiful part of the country, the “Columbia River Valley”. The valley was cut by the great Missoula floods and it is absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. I have yet to get even the slightest bit board with the beauty. We really do live in God’s country. Come visit and we will go after the world record walleye! I have been in the Wenatchee Valley for nearly 16 years. In 1994 I was asked to join Rotary International. I was looking for a way to give back to our community but had no idea the ways it would happen. I have been so blessed to lead construction teams on playground equipment, habitat houses, doing renovations for homeless shelters, and the most significant take a city park from conception as part of Rotary 100th anniversary. The 7 acre “Rotary Park” in Wenatchee will be a significant site for many years to come. This park has a nine hole Frisbee golf course, basket ball court, Amphitheater, several miles of asphalt pathways, picnic shelter, restrooms, play ground equipment and soon the interactive water feature. The neat thing about this project is it was built with volunteer time and donations from many individuals who felt the same passion for this project as I did. All of the weekend days and late week night hours seemed like a very small contribution when the neighbor hood kids were able to play in an area that once was an apple orchard. At the end of most of these work sessions I went to the other major project I was working on which was building a home along the Columbia River. I still thank my father-in-law for the work ethic as it would have been easy to quit hours and hours before I did. You know I would like to catch up with as many class mates as possible during the reunion. I would guess Fujan will have a keg in his room. Dave you bring the ice and I will get the first keg. Sorry I won’t be able to hang around and clean-up. I know some things never change. I apologize if it seemed as if I rambled. I did not have an example to look at and how quick can you cover that last 30 YEARS! For some of you this is no surprise as we keep in touch. For others you may be saying who the heck is Rich Peters? Is he in our class? Well I am a classmate of your 1978 Worthington Trojans!

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