Thomas Erik Peterson ’68

Thomas Erik Peterson ’68 died on June 15. He was born in Amarillo, Texas, on March 4, 1946, and attended high school in Ukiah, California, where he played football, basketball, and baseball. At Dartmouth Thomas was a government major and a member of Kappa Sigma. After graduation he hitchhiked to California and briefly drove a cab in Oakland. A year later he entered Harvard Law School but left before finishing, disillusioned by the paucity of values and motivations in many of his classmates. Searching for a deeper meaning in life, he took a job in the pear orchards of northern California and underwent a religious conversion. With his brother, David, he joined the Jesus People House in Fortuna, California, and nearby Lighthouse Ranch, a Christian community on the ocean cliffs of Eureka. Tom became a leader and elder in the ministry and there met his future wife, Cynthia Kohlhas, who he married in 1973. Tom spent his life preaching the gospel, first at Living Waters Ranch in Los Angeles and then in Chicago, where he spent more than 20 years founding a Christian school, serving as principal, and overseeing Gospel Outreach’s national and international ministry teams. Tom suffered throughout life from congenital heart disease, multiple post-operative sequelae, and a debilitating stroke in 2018, but he never lost faith. Tom is survived by Cynthia and five children.