Dear Friends and Virginians:
Fathers can get a tough rap in today’s world: toxic, inept or simply indifferent. And those are the gentle versions.
Real life is different. I was very lucky to have two great men — my father and father-in-law — who provided an example of leadership and sacrifice.
John Earle Petersen was born in 1940 in Lafayette, Louisiana. His parents nicknamed him “Butchie” as a young boy, due to his wild blond curls and high-watt smile. Butchie grew up in America leaving the Depression. His family moved around a lot looking for work: Georgia, Florida, and then Nebraska, where his older brother Chap was a track and football star. Summers on his maternal grandpa’s ranch in Oklahoma.
Finally, the family settled in the Illinois suburb of Arlington Heights. John was a popular young man in high school, starring in the school’s version of “Oklahoma.” He was also ambitious, hard-working and smart as hell. He graduated from Northwestern University with honors, while driving a commercial truck on weekends to pay the bills. Along the way, he met and married a Virginia belle named Mary Livingston. (Sixty-five years later, she remembers her sorority sisters talking about him before their first date: “He was considered very good looking”).
After receiving a Ford Foundation scholarship, John headed to grad school at Wharton School (Penn). He left there with a graduate degree in economics and a daughter, Mary LeGrand. After getting his first job with the Federal Reserve, he and Mary bought a small cottage from her grandmother in the Town of Fairfax. There, two more children arrived: John Chapman (1968) and Elizabeth Schuyler (1976).
My Dad’s specialty was public finance. He was the expert on both the national and international bond market, helping governments around the globe find ways to build schools, construct highways, and have access to clean drinking water. His impact was vast. Later in life, he became a professor at the Schaar School of Public Policy at George Mason and, even today, I hear from former students who were influenced by him.
Dad was my first and best advisor both in politics and business. Having grown up in a working-class home, he was conservative with money. But he believed in his children and when he was in — he was all in. I trusted him entirely, because he knew me. I wanted to be just like him.
When he died in 2012, hundreds of his former colleagues and employees came to his funeral. His children honored and respected him and his wife adored him. What more can a man ask for?
Duk Kyu Kim was born in 1940 in today’s North Korea. As a young boy, his family lived under the harsh occupation of Japan, which treated Korea as its own captive province. School instruction was entirely in Japanese. In 1945, the War ended but then the Communists moved in. Christian families were isolated and persecuted. Eventually, Duk’s family escaped to the South and relative safety — until the North Koreans invaded in June 1950 and overran Seoul. Three months later, the U.S. Marines fought their way back in. (As an older man, he still remembered the young Americans running house-to-house through the City). But that was only the beginning of a long war between the U.S. and China.
Duk’s father disappeared during the War, which lasted three years. Two brothers died of starvation. Somehow, he and his mother survived, through luck, prayer and quick wits. After the War, he attended University and was (ironically) hired to work for Toyota, which was starting a new factory in Daegu, South Korea. In Daegu, he was introduced to his friend’s young sister, a 19-year old beauty named Jang Young-Suk. They married and quickly had two children. Life was good … and then they had the chance to live in America.
My wife’s parents arrived in the U.S. in 1976. They had no permanent home, but a strong desire to work. Eventually, Duk started a clothing business in downtown Cleveland, which became multiple stores in northeast Ohio. He fulfilled his wife’s lifelong dream when she graduated from the Cleveland Conservatory of Music and joined the Cleveland Opera. (If you attended our wedding in 1996, you’ll remember her singing). His children grew up as American kids in the Eighties with a foot in two cultures.
Of course, he got a rude shock when his precious daughter So-yeon (Sharon) married me, but eventually accepted it. For the last decade of his life, he and “Harmani” lived in the house next-door to us. He saw his grandchildren and got to play golf every day, up until 2023 when he passed. What a life!
Like my Dad, Duk was all about work and supporting his family. He was a stoic man, who didn’t talk a lot about himself. I finally had to sit down and interview him, with my Korean associate Janice, about his War experiences. He was a man of high integrity, who was a leader in his church. He understood freedom and passed it on to his children. That’s what America is about.
So happy Father’s Day to two great Dads. RIP.
JCP Notes: On Saturday, June 20, Thomas and I ran the Chesty Puller 10K in West Point, Virginia. Below is a photo from the race.
My family has a strong connection to West Point. My great-great grandfather Rozsel Donohoe was the editor of The West Point Star, before moving to Fairfax and starting The Fairfax Herald. (He also served as State Senator in Fairfax). Meanwhile, West Point’s Chesty Puller, USMC, married a local girl, Virginia (“Jinx”) Evans of Saluda. Her first cousin was Mary Walton (McCandlish) Livingston, my grandmother. So, yes, we’re all related down here.
Working on a big project for the upcoming 250th birthday of the USA, i.e. a history of my family in the United States. The first part, titled “Accotink,” is at the printers and will hopefully be available later this summer. It’s about the lives of Jeremiah Moore and his grandson Thomas Moore, two patriarchs of Fairfax County dating back to the days of George Washington. Stay tuned.
Peace,
Chap