 Jean Peckham Kavale, M.A., lived for many years in Silicon Valley, California, with her husband, Bob, a retired engineering manager. They have since relocated to Central California. The daughter of a career army officer 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 army engineers. He later transferred to the Quartermaster Corps. During her childhood, Jean and her brother Howie 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. Her mother was the granddaughter of pioneers, Joseph Davis and the former Flora Marsh, who journeyed through then-dangerous terrain from the eastern United States to Montana, where they settled. They didn't know each other at the time they traveled westward. Flora came with her family and was introduced to Joseph in Helena. Their life in Montana is described in detail in From the Potomac. 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 elder daughter, Bell, met and later married a dashing Canadian man of Scottish ancestry. Bell and her husband, Robert MacFarlane, lived in the boom town of Dawson City, where their baby girl, Marion (Jean's mother), was born. Joseph and Flora eventually returned to Montana, where they settled down permanently. Jean's father Howard, a farmer's son, was born in Connecticut, which was also the birthplace of his parents and grandparents. His dad, Frank, 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, Howard's dad 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 abruptly ended when he chose an army career. He began seeing the world soon after his graduation from the U. S. Military Academy. 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 were stationed. (Her Canadian father died when Marion was two years old.) 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 an 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 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. Upon her retirement, Jean continued to write. Several of her articles on the subjects of religion and history have appeared in newspapers and magazines. Her autobiography, From the Potomac to the Seine, was published in 1999. (To get an autographed copy of this book, please use the form on the last page of this website. For a personalized inscription, send your request to our email address: cypresstree123@hotmail.com.) Jean is currently writing a biography of her father, The Life and Work of Major General Howard L. Peckham, to be published in 2008. Please watch this site for details. |
