Peter G. Constable's Obituary
Peter Graham Constable, 87, passed away peacefully on November 16, 2017, in Tucson, Arizona. Peter was born in Chelmsford, England, on June 27, 1930, to Frederick and Edith Constable (nee Chubb), and was the second youngest of nine siblings (three brothers and six sisters). He is survived by his wife Lanie; son Gary, Gary’s wife Melissa and their daughters Emily and Olivia; and many many dear friends.
After a number of years as a seaman, first on tankers and then as a steward on luxury passenger ships (including the Queen of Bermuda and the Queen Mary), Peter desired to emigrate to the United States. He joined the United States Air Force in 1951 during the Korean War, eventually attaining the rank of Airman, First Class, in the weather squadron, and served at U.S. air bases located in the United States and England. He served for four years, and became a U.S. citizen during the course of his service. He went to St. John’s University on the G.I. bill, graduating with a degree in accounting, started in the banking field and progressed to various leadership positions in the major financial institutions in New York. He spent the last thirty years of his career as a stockbroker and financial advisor. He taught courses at the New York School of Finance and was a member of the Society for the Investigation of Recurring Events (S.I.R.E.), an association primarily dedicated to analysis of market trends, and served as its President for many years. He and Lanie moved to Tucson in 1998, and he worked at Wachovia Securities for a number of years before retiring at the age of 75.
Throughout his life he read extensively, often about nature and natural history. After retirement, he served as a Docent at Tohono Chul Park, a Sonoroan Desert Botanical Garden in Tucson, Arizona. He was a lifelong animal lover, gardener and naturalist.
Peter travelled extensively over the course of his life, at sea, in the military and with his family. Wherever he worked, lived or went he engaged with people in a unique special kind way and had a charisma all his own. He and Lanie always looked forward to their next adventure, and often picked up friends along the way. Many of his friends became family to him. He valued his friends and colleagues, as well as meeting new people and sharing stories and ideas, and most enjoyed a good laugh, a fine meal and great company. He always injected humor, perspective and comfort into situations requiring it.
Peter was selfless and generous of spirit. For much of his childhood he was raised with his brother Brian in a children’s home run by the Church of England. He was always extremely grateful for people’s charitable donations to children. In that spirit, in lieu of flowers or gifts please consider donating to one of the following charities in his honor:
Casa de los Ninos (Tucson) and Jewish Family & Children's Services of Southern Arizona.
A service in celebration of Peter’s life will be held on Tuesday, November 21, 2017, at 3:00 p.m. at Evergreen Mortuary and Cemetery, 3015 North Oracle Rd., Tucson, AZ.
Eulogy for Dad (abridged version)
First, I want to thank all of you for being here today and providing Mom and me with love and support over the past days. We have never needed your collective support more, and we truly appreciate it.
One early morning this week when working on this eulogy I saw a great Tucson sunrise from the east and I thought about all the support and love we have also been getting from our friends, family and colleagues back east and in England, as well as in California. You are truly here in our hearts as well and we feel your presence here with us.
For Dad’s eulogy, I want to convey to you the story of Dad’s unbelievable life.
Many of you know Dad from a certain period of his life and have heard some of the rest of the story, but not the whole story. Luckily for me, Dad--being the pack rat that he was--kept many of his important papers over the years, and I have been fortunate to be able to learn even more about him over the past few days.
When putting this together, I honestly had too much content on the first draft. Last night I sharpened the pencil to make this more manageable -- that is the type of life Dad had; he lived and saw so much.
Dad was born in England in 1930 during the middle of a great economic depression; Dad was the second youngest of 10 children, having 6 sisters and three brothers. Dad’s father fought in World War I and was gassed in battle with toxic mustard gas which plagued him for the rest of his life and eventually led to a premature death when Dad was only 21 years old.
Likely as a result of the depression, his father’s condition and his mother’s alcoholism, his parents placed him and his younger brother Brian together into an orphanage run by the Church of England where they remained until they were 14.
At the orphanage Dad and Brian literally had World War II on their back porch. In 1940 and 41, Hitler began “the Blitz” bombing campaign on England. Bombings were mostly at night and one night Dad’s orphanage was bombed in the middle of the darkness while he was sleeping— two bombs fell in the field on one side of the orphanage and one bomb on the other side. Very near misses.
Food was limited and rationed. Dad told me that if you weren’t quick at dinner time there would be no food for you. This may explain his very thin appearance in early pictures. For the rest of his life he would never waste food, always bringing home leftovers from a restaurant or finding a use for it.
During the war, Dad would see downed planes, bomb craters and destroyed buildings on his two mile walk to school. Life was dangerous and exciting in these years and Dad would see the war in full force—tanks and aircraft, soldiers and military equipment coming through, and later in the war, V1 and V2 German rockets overhead. Dad shared it all with me.
In 1941, Dad’s oldest brother Alan and 1400 other sailors died onboard the HMS Hood, one of England’s most formidable battleships. The ship sank in less than five minutes and only 3 sailors survived. When he told me this story I could tell that this had a significant effect on him at the time.
During my childhood my Dad’s brother Brian would visit us each summer and Dad’s and Uncle Brian’s stories about their childhood made history come alive for me.
When Dad reached the age of 14 it was mandatory that he leave the orphanage and quit school. His childhood was essentially over. A five year apprenticeship program was found for him in the printing trades but Dad would not commit to that and he went to live with one of his aunts. Toward the end of the war Dad started to work in an office at a shipyard and this is where presumably he developed interest in a life at sea.
During this period Dad also worked at the Avon Hotel in Amesbury and assisted a retired sea captain. I believe this man helped Dad get into the British merchant marines through supporting his entrance into the National Sea Training School. This school trained deckhands and catering boys for merchant ships. I remember Dad telling me that during this time he would ride his bike 50 or 60 miles to London at a time by drafting behind double decker buses.
After the war many young people wanted out of England— there were food shortages and little opportunity. Dad knew that if he was a ship steward he would always have food and a bunk, which was true security for someone who was basically on his own at such a young age. On the ships he could also see the world and have a “ship family”. Dad first worked for a year on an Esso oil tanker named the Franz Klasen, where he held the title of “Captain’s Tiger”, which basically meant he did all of the captain’s personal bidding similar to a personal valet, including serving his meals, tending to his cabin and generally taking care of the captain. Dad’s travelling and full independence starts here, at barely 17 years old. He told me stories of travelling to the Persian Gulf, Canada, the U.S., the Caribbean and South America on oil and fresh water runs. Every port seemed to have a story and a girl involved and a great comradery with his crew. One story he told involved him and his buddy in a Middle Eastern port. They wanted to see where the local people lived and asked the cab driver where they could go. The cab driver took them to a tented city out in the desert and introduced them to a tribal leader. They ate and partied all night with the tribe without much communication. When the cab driver returned the next morning there was some commotion and the cab driver then explained to Dad that he and his friend had married two of the tribal women the night before in a ceremony, Dad marrying the tribe leader’s daughter. Sensing a scam, they told the cab driver to get them out of there, but the tribe chased them back to the ship and the ship was held up at port to figure it all out. What stories he had.
After a year on the tanker, work became available on the transatlantic cruise liners and Dad served as a waiter in the dining rooms of the White Star Cunard line, including the Aquitania, the Franconia, the Mauretania and the Queen Mary. Initially the runs were between England and Canada to ferry troops and war brides after the war. Later these ships carried immigrants, passengers and pleasure cruisers.
In November 1950, presumably while on leave in England, he saw an elderly woman fall into the cold water of the River Thames along the Victoria Embankment in London during a public event. Dad saw this from a distance and jumped in after her, rescued her and a crowd gathered. People that were present took pictures of the rescue, the news made headlines and Dad was given awards and honors, including from the Royal Humane Society.
After seeing New York and the United States, Dad decided that he would try to eventually make the United States his home. The ability to get ahead in England was based on status and family and Dad didn’t have much of that going for him coming out of the orphanage. He was able to secure a position on the Queen of Bermuda line that mostly ferried passengers between New York and Bermuda so he could have more time in the U.S.. Dad befriended George Beck, a night watchman at a shipyard in Staten Island. When Dad’s ship was in port in New York, and he didn’t want to stay on the boat he would stay with George or fall asleep in an all night movie theater in Times Square. Dad would also donate blood for money after the passages, which greatly supplemented his minimal ship wages. George eventually offered to sponsor Dad and help him get U.S. residency. He received his residency, but citizenship itself was competitive in these years. To gain an edge, Dad, at 20 years old, wrote to President Truman to offer his services to the State Department to assist with British relations. The State Department politely declined.
After four years at sea, Dad wanted off of the ships and to become a citizen. Dad met his first wife Rosa, also known as “Susie”, on the Queen of Bermuda when he was about 20. She was the onboard beautician and was of Colombian background, eleven years older that Dad, had two previous husbands and one teenage son. They were married in 1951 towards the end of Dad’s life at sea.
The Korean War had begun and the U.S. Air Force didn’t require citizenship, so Dad enlisted to get some work on dry land and to make himself a better candidate for citizenship. When going in for his Air Force physical exam he weighed 128 pounds and was 5’ 10”. The minimum weight required for his height was 130 pounds. With this likely being one of his last options for citizenship, I could see Dad digging deep and using his charm and charisma to warm the doctor up so he could slide by. The doctor told him to go across the street and have a big breakfast and come back.
In the Air Force Dad trained as a weather observer to guide planes with respect to weather hazards. He trained in Illinois and was stationed in England and later in the Seattle area, serving four years in total. While in the service he took and passed the GED high school and college level exams.
Towards the end of his time in the service he re-applied for citizenship and was eventually brought before a Judge for questioning prior to being made a citizen. The Judge saw that he was in the U.S. Air Force and to test his loyalty he asked Dad whether he would drop bombs on his native home of England if he was ordered to do so by the Air Force. Dad sensed a trick question and worked to get out of it but the judge would not have it. He finally answered “Yes, your honor, I would drop the bombs as ordered”. The judge gave him a skeptical look and then Dad continued, “…but your honor, I would be sure to miss”. The courtroom laughed, the judge chuckled and Dad became a citizen.
In 1955, Dad was honorably discharged and he moved to New York City. He applied to every four year college in the area using the G.I. bill, and although he had his GED, he was rejected because he didn’t have a high school diploma. In desperation he badgered and pursued an admissions officer at St. John’s University, which is affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church. He told him that England didn’t grant high school diplomas and that the school seemed to be discriminating against him because he was Protestant and from England and not a Catholic. The officer eventually asked him what would be his intended major. My Dad, not prepared for this, and not knowing what a major was, just picked the first one on the alphabetical list presented and he was admitted into the accountancy program.
Dad worked multiple jobs at a time during college and lived on East 69th Street and later West End Avenue. He looked to apply for better work and convinced a bank officer to give him some work at a bank. He worked through the ranks as a transfer agent and then a securities specialist. He also sold life insurance door-to-door during this time, and learned the art of salesmanship. Even while working full time he was able to complete all his credits in four years. Later he started working at the Alexander Hamilton Institute, managing a group that provided financial advice to students and former students.
His first marriage came to a close just prior to this time. Now in his early 30’s, he moved to Forest Hills and was very active in the Young Republicans Club in the area. Dad seemed to also be somewhat of a player with the ladies at this time, juggling multiple romantic interests.
Dad met Mom when she started working at Alexander Hamilton at age 20. She was in a different department, but Dad had an inside track on when female new hires were starting. He got word that he should check out Helene Nathanson. Dad arranged for an introduction and Mom and Dad started dating soon thereafter. He realized that they both had a passion for travel and adventure. About six months after they started dating, Dad proposed a two week European trip for them to see Belgium, France and England. Mom went with him, but told her parents she was going on the trip alone.
My parents loved the trip and when they returned Mom told Grandma that she was dating Dad and that she was moving in with him. To say Grandma was shocked would be a gross understatement. To put this in perspective, Mom’s DNA is nothing but Jews going back 1000 plus years. On top of that, with Dad being 16 years older than Mom, from a different country and culture and them living together outside of marriage this was truly a Jewish mother nightmare. Once Grandma recovered from all of this she decided she was going to unleash her secret weapon to put an end to all of this—her sister Marni. Marni lived near Forest Hills and was tough, having been through a lot herself, and also had a good relationship with Mom. With total confidence, Grandma put Marni into action with all the Jewish mother ammunition she had and sent Marni over to the apartment to tell off Dad and talk sense into Mom.
Mom and Dad welcomed Marni in and Dad, in his charismatic, soft spoken and confident way, and with his English accent and charm and those blue eyes, disarmed Marni’s attack and diffused the situation. Dad also saw a lot in Marni on that visit and offered her a job where he was working. Marni had to report back to Grandma that he was a great guy and that she has a new job-- not exactly the result Grandma was looking for!
Forest Hills didn’t last long as Dad wasn’t quite ready to settle down again, but Mom and Dad continued to date and they went on another trip, this time to Hawaii. They got engaged in 1968 and chose their wedding date through the drawing of cards on a playing deck. After getting engaged they met to have dinner with Mom’s parents so her parents could finally meet Dad. After dinner Grandma came up to Mom and told her that she could absolutely see why Mom fell in love with him and how charming he was-- Dad’s charisma and sweetness was shining through.
Before the wedding ceremony, however, Dad wanted to take Mom’s parents on a trip. Dad was a member of a travel group called Sky Roamers. Sky Roamers was a cooperative that owned a plane and every week or so they would travel to a new place. The plane was an old propeller cargo plane gutted on the inside and without much typical seating, basically a flying barn. This would be Grandpa and Grandma’s first plane ride ever. My parents and grandparents had a great time down in Cozumel and the trip really sealed the deal with my grandparents. They respected Dad for the rest of their lives and I remember them always looking to him for advice on investments, finances, growing tomatoes, and everything else. Dad had a bond with them and considered them the mom and dad he never had. He would help them however he could for the rest of their lives.
While working at a small securities firm, Dad learned about over the counter stock options and began creating stock option trading strategies for investors. He wound up becoming a bit of a pioneer in the field of stock option trading. At this time there was no exchange traded options and it was not a widely used practice in the securities industry.
When Mom was pregnant with me, he convinced the president of Walston, a large New York securities firm at the time, to let him create an options department at the firm. He would trade options and teach its brokers how to use stock options in client portfolios. The President asked my Dad how much a position like this should be paid and my Dad named his price, starting with a high number. The President agreed to it and my Dad honored the firm within our new family by naming our first dog “Mister Walston”. We called him “Mister” for short.
Right before I was born, my parents moved to Stamford, Connecticut to start a family, but quickly realized that they were bored and belonged back in the city at this time in their life. We moved back into the city to the West Village. It was 1972 and my parents’ social boredom quickly went away. They met interesting people there and lived adjacent to famous musicians of the time Ritchie Havens and Todd Rundgren.
My Dad left Walston and convinced yet another Wall Street securities firm named Moseley to let him trade and teach options like he did at Walston. At Moseley he would likewise have to travel extensively. He often exchanged his first class tickets that were provided to him for extra tickets for me and my Mom to come along and be with him. Dad got in trouble once with an executive at Moseley because he was not using enough of his expense account and was making the other executives that had them look bad. Dad didn’t need to use the expense account to make the sale, get the job done or achieve his goal-- he had his own creative and charismatic way of getting the job done.
Articles were written about Dad and his stock option theories and he taught at New York and Philadelphia schools of finance. The Chicago Board Options Exchange was then seeing a downtick in commodities option trading and wanted to add stock option trading to boost business. The CBOE reached to Dad to help them set up this exchange and offered him an executive position to do so, but neither Mom nor Dad wanted to move to Chicago. At this time Dad also had a weekly New York area Cable TV show which provided insight into the stock market.
My parents moved to East 86th Street in New York as I approached school age. My parents continued to meet interesting people and had many adventures within the confines of city, family and work limitations. One of the interesting couples my parents were friends with at the time was the U.S. Ambassador to Oman and his wife. They would invite my parents to U.N. parties and Dad loved it.
East 86th Street is where I have my earliest memories of Dad. I remember seeing him on TV, remember plants that he grew on the terrace, him watching the news and PBS-- particularly a new science show called Nova-- and lots of reading. Dad read about current events, finance, science, nature, natural history and politics and I was very impressed with his vast depth of knowledge. I found out later that when Dad was on the ships for long periods of time reading was really all you could do. He was self-taught on the high seas, reading books and magazines such as Readers Digest and National Geographic. He also read a periodical on the ships called Arizona Highways. In New York we would see movies, go to the city parks, museums, shows and attractions and spend time with family as well as with friends that were made. My parents built a home in the Poconos where we would escape the city on weekends and also ski in the winter when we didn’t go to Vermont. Dad taught me how to swim in the pool located in building’s basement. While at 86th Street my parents took a three week trip driving across the U.S. to see the Arizona that Dad read about on the ships. We saw the entire country and had a great adventure.
After a while, the life of running a stock options program at a Wall Street firm with all the travel and long hours started taking a toll on Dad and he enjoyed it less and less. Mom and Dad also decided at this time that it would be best for the family to move into the suburbs and we moved to Tenafly, New Jersey. Dad traded in his Wall Street work with options for less stressful work as a retail securities broker and financial advisor. Dad became available to me a lot more after that change. At the same time, Mom was able to return to college to finish her degree and eventually get back into the workforce which she missed after a 10 year absence. We had more room in the suburbs and we all loved animals. At one point we had two dogs, a cat, a parrot, a turtle, two snakes and fish. Dad loved plants and gardening and had a green thumb. People would give him house plants that were dying in their homes and Dad would miraculously revive them. When he was around 49 he built a vegetable garden, a workshop, two dog runs and doghouses, a tool shed from the ground up and he started building a treehouse for me. I was impressed that he could do all these things. He had played Soccer in England when he was young and he taught me.
Around this time, a friend of mine told me that a good paper route became available near the house and was easy money. It was a little more than I could handle at the time but my Dad encouraged me and helped me often during the week and every Sunday. After delivery of the big Sunday papers we would go to a luncheonette for breakfast, and to buy gum, baseball cards and scratch-off lottery tickets. When I went to sleepaway camp for 8 weeks, my Dad did my entire paper route after his work so that I wouldn’t lose it. He was selfless in so many ways. At this time he was President of the Society for the Investigation of Recurring Events, a group that covered financial market trends, and I would help him at some of the meetings in New York and with the paperwork and mailing list at home. Dad taught me to drive stick on a 1976 Corolla without a power clutch or power steering when I was 13 or 14 in an empty movie parking lot. He was so patient with that car bucking back and forth. Lots of good memories.
As an only child, Dad, Mom and I were very close. As we were a small group I was able to travel with them easily and we did many trips together. When we were on cruises I could see the sailor in Dad—it really shined through. One time when I was about 16 or 17 on a cruise with them he told me that real sailors only drink rum, so I got a bottle while at a port and we shared it. I didn’t know much about rum and I picked up one called Bacardi 151. He never heard of that one either and we had it not realizing that it was 151 proof. We were bombed and had a great time on the ship.
Dad wasn’t like the dads of my friends growing up. He wasn’t from the U.S., wasn’t Jewish, was older, didn’t grow up with parents, was raised in a war zone, had a truncated childhood and really had nothing that resembled a childhood in upper middle class suburban Jewish America. I later realized that this was a huge benefit—a lot of the nuance of getting along in suburbia I could eventually figure out on my own, but the perspective that Dad brought to my life could not be easily duplicated—things like how to bond with people that were nothing like you, how to be independent when you needed to be and how to be happy no matter your circumstances.
After college, law school and getting my first job, my parents moved to Tucson to continue their careers with an eye towards retirement. Dad was 68 now. He of course instantly took to Tucson and I visited Mom and Dad as often as possible, either here in Tucson or at a destination like Napa Valley or Las Vegas. Dad loved the desert and the people who lived here and Tucson became a launching off point for them for a whole new set of adventures and travel. We took Dad to Alaska for his 70th birthday and we all loved it. Dad retired at 75-- the last few years at Wachovia he was allowed to stay there more because everyone there liked him and he made the office a better place rather than for the money the firm made on him. In retirement Dad became a docent at Tohono Chul Park, which for those back east is a Sonoran desert botanical garden, and he trained to learn about all the insects, plants and animals of the desert and to teach others. Mom retired later and the two of them started travelling even more extensively, continuing to cross off the places they always wanted to go such as the South Pacific, China and Southeast Asia, Continental and Northern Europe, the national parks, Israel, the Panama Canal and the Canadian Rockies. As Dad got older, travelling got harder with his long term battle with rheumatoid arthritis. Travelling meant so much to Dad that they persevered and always looked forward to the next trip.
On the last trip they took this October, I met them in Memphis before their river boat cruise down the Mississippi. I saw that this one truly had to be the last trip they could make together.
Dad was the best. The terms “self-made” and “salt of the earth” should have his picture next to them in the dictionary.
Going out on your own at 14 is pretty unheard of and the chances of anyone making a success of that is slim. The possible courses of life that most of us have is limited by guide posts-- whether parental guidance, financial security, professional training, cultural expectations or otherwise. Dad had little or none of that and his course could have gone in any direction. His intelligence, infectious charm, unique ability to bond, positive outlook and good looks were certainly a winning combination, but he was also just nice and naturally pleasant to be around—he had a real natural attraction. Even in his later years when people tend to become more ornery, his light shined through much more often than not.
Dad and Mom had a very special unique relationship, and were dedicated to each other for 51 years. They were from different worlds but shared the same passions and a commitment to make it work. Dedicated partners in every way possible. This wasn’t the easiest path for either of them to take, but it resulted in such a rare caring, loving and rewarding partnership.
Dad, we will all miss you terribly. Even though you lived a long life and we had lots of time together, these past days without knowing you are on this Earth has been very tough. I promise that your friends and family will persevere and get through this time together and that you will be remembered with love and fondness forever.
-Gary
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