PETER M. DeVEAU

Former Alaska resident Peter Maurice DeVeau passed on peacefully in Sequim, Wash., on April 14, 2002, at age 84.

Born in Olympia, Wash., on Nov. 16, 1917, Mr. DeVeau came to Seldovia with his father in 1932, where they fished until 1939. At that time they moved to Kodiak. He served in the U.S. Merchant Marines from 1942-1945 and married Minnie Lentz on Nov. 6, 1945.

He served as a radio technician, CAA, on Woody Island from 1946-1949. He organized and was president of Island Seafoods and owned DeVeau Cannery in Kodiak from 1949-1958, when he sold his interests in the cannery and established the DeVeau Electronics and Electric Co. in Kodiak.

He served as a member of the Alaska Legislature from 1959-1963 during the transition from territory to statehood; and again from 1969-1970. He sponsored the legislative bill in the Alaska House that would establish the first Alaska State Ferry -- the Tustumena.

He was mayor of Kodiak from 1963-1969, helping lead that community back from the devastation of the 1964 Good Friday earthquake and tidal wave.

He was chairman of the Alaska King Crab Marketing Control Board from 1965-1970. He retired from the crab marketing control board and sold his electronics business in 1973 and moved to Sequim, Wash. During the trans-Alaska pipeline construction years he worked as an electrician at the terminus in Valdez. Then he retired again to Sequim, where he lived until his death.

Mr. DeVeau was a member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks Lodge of Kodiak, and a 50-year member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Pioneers of Alaska, Alaska Centennial Commission and the Democratic Party.

His hobbies were CB radio communication, story telling and Alaska history.

His wife, Minnie, preceded him in death in 1998.

He is survived by his stepdaughter and spouse, Lena Lou and Herbert Carpenter, of Vancouver Island, Canada; son, LeRoi Heaven (whom he met for the first time in November 1996) and Heaven's wife, Margaret, of Wasilla; grandson, Troy Heaven of Denver, Colo.; and many nieces and nephews.

Mr. DeVeau was interred next to his wife at the Sequim View Cemetery in Sequim, Wash. No services are planned.