new photo of jean
About the Author
 
Jean Peckham Kavale, M.A., lived for many years in Silicon Valley, California, with her husband, Bob, a now-retired engineering manager. They have since relocated to California's Central Valley.
 
Although she always had an interest in American military history, the scrapbooks and diaries Jean kept over the years inspired her to write about her father's specific contributions to the United States Army, especially his highly responsible work while he was a brigadier general during WWII and serving in Washington. She combined these and numerous other sources--such as information she learned by reading government documents--to create a biography of the military life and dedicated military service of her dad, a much-admired man and a meritorious general in WWII.
jean on the balcony: Ft. Leavenworth
Early Years
 
 
The daughter of an officer of the United States Army and a stay-at-home mom (who was a talented musician), Jean entered this world in Cleveland, Ohio, one of several locations where her father was stationed with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He later transferred to the Quartermaster Corps. During her childhood, Jean and her brother Howie (Howard L. Peckham Jr.) moved frequently with their parents from place to place, including several army posts in the South. They lived at Fort Benning, Georgia, when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred on December 7, 1941. Howie graduated from West Point and served in the Korean War and the Vietnam War. He is now a retired air force colonel living in Florida.
 
Jean's mother, the former Marion MacFarlane Shaw, was the granddaughter of pioneers, Joseph Davis and the former Flora Marsh, who journeyed through then-dangerous terrain from the eastern United States to Helena, Montana, where they settled. They became pioneers again many years after their marriage when they lived temporarily in Canada's Yukon Territory during the Klondike Gold Rush. It was an exciting time for them: Joseph found gold, and his daughter Bell met and married Robert MacFarlane, a dashing Canadian man of Scottish ancestry. Bell and Robert lived in the boom town of Dawson City, where their daughter Marion was born. Joseph and Flora returned to Helena, where they settled down permanently.
 
Howard Louis Peckham, Jean's father, was born in Connecticut, which was also the birthplace of his parents and grandparents. His dad, Frank Everett Peckham, owned some of the largest flower and vegetable gardens in the eastern part of the state.  Besides being a rugged man who lived until the age of 94, Frank was very patriotic and seldom failed to display the American flag in front of his house on holidays. Howard's paternal grandmother, the former Ann Matilda Corning, was a descendant of Uriah Corning, a Revolutionary War soldier.  The pastoral life Jean's father enjoyed all his life ended when he chose an army career. He began seeing the world soon after his graduation from West Point. One of the first places he was stationed as a bachelor lieutenant was in the Philippines, which he often recalled with fondness. He and Marion met and married at Fort Hayes, Ohio, where both he and her army-officer stepfather, Frederick Shaw, were stationed. (Robert MacFarlane died when Marion was only two years old.)
 
Jean's Book Signing
Education and Work
 
Jean attended high school in Washington, DC; Paris, France; and Mount Vernon, New York. After earning a bachelor's degree in English at the University of Maryland in College Park, she moved to New York City and worked for three years as Immigration Assistant for Church World Service, a division of the National Council of Churches. In addition to her other duties, she composed and sent letters on behalf of escapees from Communist countries in order to secure jobs and housing for them. As a graduate school student, Jean continued her education after moving to California. At San Jose State University, she earned a teaching credential in 1964 and then taught school for several years.
 
However, it was the master's degree in pastoral theology she received in 1977 from the University of San Francisco that propelled her into the world of publishing, a field in which she worked for more than 15  years. Her work  included serving as a contract editor of manuals for such well-known companies as IBM, ROLM, Siemens Rolm, and GE. As a contractor for IBM, her editing included several manuals in a System Library.  As Senior Editor with PDR Information Services, where Jean worked for more than seven years, she reorganized or rewrote a large variety of books and manuals. The first edition of her book Faith and Philosophy was published by Redwood Publishing in 1979. Since her retirement, Jean has continued to write. Several of her articles on the subjects of religion and history have appeared in newspapers and magazines.  In 1999, Cypress Publishing published her autobiography, From the Potomac to the Seine: The Personal Story of an Army Family and a second edition of Faith and Philosophy.
 
(The photo shows Jean signing her book in Silicon Valley.)