This is the tribute that J.J. Bell delivered at the Memorial Service on April 23:
"In a recent article, the President of Oxfam America stated that Peter was the “kind of invisible statesman who could eat breakfast with peasants, lunch with presidents and dine in the evening with human rights activists.” In reading the many tributes to Peter since his passing, I got to admire him all over again-- and I was pretty impressed the first time. I can certainly attest that he was the quintessential over achiever, but an over achiever with a big heart, always rooted in the solid values he learned growing up here in Gloucester. As Peter’s younger brother by seven years, I viewed him mainly from the back seat—and I mean that on many levels. He lived his life day by day on the gold standard, while the rest of our large family, and I think we all would agree, were on the silver standard on good days, the bronze standard on some of the lesser days. Some days we did not even medal. It was actually quite liberating to discover Peter was operating in a totally different orbit. For gosh sakes, by the time I was entering grammar school, Peter had already become an Eagle Scout, traveled to Japan with the American Field Service, wrote a book about his experience, and had his whole family in kimonos with chopsticks eating seaweed, all before he secured early acceptance at Yale. And that was just the beginning.
Always modest and with classic New England reserve, Peter never flaunted his propensity for perfection, although it was clearly there. It is for that reason as siblings we took a certain delight to hear from our parents, as family lore, that as a young child in Magnolia, Peter slipped out of the house one day to a neighbor’s house and took some cookies right out of their kitchen cabinet. After catching him with his hands in the cookie jar, so to speak, my parents forced a contrite Peter to return to the scene of the crime and apologize. A few years later, another story goes, living in East Gloucester and apparently not fully repentant, and once again wholly out of character, Peter wandered alone out of the family yard while playing, then walked a quarter of a mile down the road toward the small fire station then in existence and proceeded to pull the alarm, creating quite a scare, not to mention a commotion. Well, it seems from then on, he was on the straight and narrow road toward the impressive man of international stature he was to become.
Following the Bell family tradition, Peter also had a few foibles which we all found quite amusing. He cared nothing about cars and knew even less about them. It reflected in his driving ability which was, for lack of a better word, horrible. Earlier, I spoke about my viewing Peter from the back seat. The back seat is exactly where you wanted to be when Peter was driving, with seat belt fastened--very tightly.
As worldly as Peter was, he knew astonishingly little about pop culture. The story goes that he sat at the same table as Angelina Jolie at a United Nations dinner on poverty. Having no idea who she was, he came home referring to a very attractive woman sitting at his table. As President of Care, Peter had done some collaboration with Bono on the One World Campaign. Never quite fully grasping who Bono was, Peter referred to U-2 as Bono’s band. Later, when U-2 came to perform in Atlanta, where Peter and Karen were living, Bono reached out to Peter, and invited him to his concert, front row and with a backstage pass, no less. Bono even did a shout out to Peter during the concert, calling him “my hero”. Unfortunately, Peter failed to hear it, as he had shut off his hearing aid in order to tune out the music, which wasn’t his favorite.
Technologically speaking, Peter was similarly challenged, a family trait he came by honestly. Karen, always there to support Peter on all things, big and small, was forever at the ready to provide technical assistance when his computer was bedeviling him.
Fortunately, Peter had a well developed sense of humor, sometimes hard to recognize because it was so dry it was almost dusty. When he did laugh, it was all in the throat and very distinctive, very infectious. When his doctors marveled at his having three different kinds of cancers at once, Peter stated matter of factly “In Gloucester we call that the perfect storm”.
Although a Spartan in many ways, Peter had some guilty and not so guilty pleasures. He instilled in me his love for Brazil, where I spent a summer with him. Never a great dancer, he loved to samba through the streets of Rio during Carnival. Although a temperate drinker, he loved to have a frozen limoncello at our house on Christmas eve. A committed citizen of Gloucester as well as of the world, he took great delight in blueberry picking in Dogtown Common, and playing tennis or walking with Karen and their dog around the Back Shore. His family, his wife, his children, their significant others and his two beautiful grandchildren, Melanie and Jessica, were the center of his expansive universe. He got to know Emily’s fiancé, Dave, and gave him very high marks, Peter not being the easiest grader. No matter where he was in the world, he had a lifelong passion for the Red Sox, reflected in his enjoyment of listening to the games on radio, even with a TV nearby. And just before he passed away, he was happily aware from brother Tim, sitting at his bedside, that it was opening day.
With a potent combination of passion, hard work and values as pure as the driven snow, Peter did so much for so many for so long. He leaves a big hole in our family and will be sorely missed."