Obituary
Sheridan Peterson, II, a 94-year-old fourth generation Windsor resident, spent much of his life teaching at universities in Asia and the Middle East as well as a training specialist for international conglomerates. Peterson’s great Grandfather Barzillai Aims Peterson and Grandmother Albertine V. Peterson buried at Shiloh Cemetery came to California during the ‘49er Gold Rush and purchasing a 380-acre farm on Fought Road. The house, built by a Spaniard in early 1800’s, is still there. His grandfather, Sheridan Peterson Se. planted a twenty-acre orange grove, the first in Northern California. Is father, Chauncey Weaver Peterson, a World War I battle scarred hero, vanished when Sheridan was nine.
A World War II Marine Corps vet, Peterson, graduated from Santa Rosa Junior College. Having successfully completed two years at the University of Missouri’s prestigious Journalism School, he and others were refused degrees. He thus transferred his journalism credits to the University’s College of Arts and Sciences, graduating with a B.A. with majors in English, Philosophy and Journalism. Smoke jumping for the United States Forest Service in Montana the following year, Peterson took one year of graduate study at the University of Montana. He studied creative writing from Pulitzer Prize winning author Walter Van Tilburg Clark and literary criticism from Pulitzer Prize winning literary critic Leslie Fielder. He had Washington state teaching credentials for life grades 1 through 12. After several years of newspaper reporting and eleven years of secondary teaching in Washington state, he went to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines on a sabbatical in 1965 and didn’t come back for thirty years.
The following year, Peterson went to Vietnam with the express purpose of writing an eye-witness literary documentary of the war and stayed seven years throughout the war. As a refugee adviser in the Mekong Delta for USAID, he was horrified by the genocide he witnessed. It left a scar that embittered him deeply. He went to Pokhara, Nepal where he wrote a 600-page protest documentary of the atrocities. His son, Sheridan Jr., and daughter Ginger were born in Nepal under vary astir conditions.
Even though he only had a B.A., the Japanese Ministry of Education granted him an Associate Professorship because of the vast amount of curriculum he’d developed for international conglomerates. He taught at the University of Economics & Law for four years and supervised eighteen English language schools throughout the country for Tesco Inc. in Tokyo.
Peterson taught for four years at universities at Beijing and Tianjin, China. He witnessed the Tiananmen Massacre at Muxidi, where over a thousand were slaughtered. His presence is documented on pages 24 & 25 of Deputy Director of Voice of America Alan L. Heil, Jr. Voice of America, and History. His article was published in the Japanese bilingual publication The Plaza, “Bouquets and Bullets”. He traveled throughout China with his very supportive students. Peterson also witnessed the 1979 Iranian Revolution in Tehran while supervising the Learning Center for Bell Helicopters at Mirabad Airfield. He also taught a Riyadh University’s Faculty of Commerce in Saudi Arabia where he witnessed Wahabbi Mullahs decapitate suppose criminals. Peterson was a training supervisor for the Bechtel Corporation in Papua New Guinea’s Star Mountains.
While teaching at Lake Washington High School in Kirkland, Washington, Peterson was enlisted by the American Federation of Teachers to set up a Freedom School in Mississippi. While engaged in a protest march in Jackson for voting rights with SNCC, he, along with Black Power Leaders Stokely Carmichael and Charlie Cobb, was incarcerated and beaten for marching without a permit. Peterson assisted with the registration of 35 black people; the first to register in Amite County.
Peterson was a licensed skydiving instructor and was both president and safety officer for Vietnam’s Saigon Sport Parachute Club. He had 270 delayed freefalls. The FBI suspected him of being the notorious skyjacker D. B. Cooper even though he had proof that he was in Nepal during the heist.
Peterson will be buried at the Shiloh District Cemetery on Tuesday, January 19, 2021 at 1:30 PM. He is survived by his son, Sheridan Ramon Peterson and his daughter, Ginger Lucian Peterson.
