Wellfleet resident and former Navy lawyer Thomas Harrison Peters III died peacefully on April 18, 2024 at Rosewood Manor in Harwich after a long illness. He was 75.

The son of the late Frank and Edith Peters, Tom was born on Nov. 23, 1948 in Mason, Ohio, where he grew up. His father, who died when Tom was 10, was a professor at Xavier University, and his mother, a Duke University graduate, was dean at a branch campus of the University of Cincinnati.

The Peters family had settled in Provincetown in 1873, and Tom spent every summer of his childhood in the family’s home in Truro. He told his wife, Sue, that in the early 1950s, before the reconstruction of Route 6, it took a full day to get from the Sagamore Bridge to Truro.

“Tom was a smart guy,” Sue said. “When he was in high school, he participated in a television trivia show for high school students.” He had a photographic memory, she added, and remembered everything he learned in school and when he learned it. “I learned that in eighth grade physics,” he might say.

After graduating from Mason High School in 1966, Tom went to Princeton, where he majored in history and graduated in 1970 having written a thesis titled “Unconventional Warfare in the Mexican Revolution.” He played tight end on Princeton’s football team, was a member of the Yacht Club, and was in the Navy ROTC program.

During his three years of Naval service, from 1970 to 1973, he was an officer on the USS Manatee, “a notorious ship,” Sue said, that was responsible for an oil spill off the coast of San Clemente, Calif. that resulted in President Richard Nixon’s dog Checkers being covered in oil. The commander of the ship was relieved of duty, and after the incident Tom was put in charge of “liquid cargo operations,” as he put it in a resume he composed in the 1980s.

The Manatee was also engaged in operations during the Vietnam War, and Tom was awarded the Vietnam Service Medal and the Vietnam Campaign Medal for his service.

Tom studied law at the University of Cincinnati Law School, where he published an article called “Seamen’s Death Claims and the General Maritime Law.” There, he also met Sue, and they became life partners for 48 years.

With his Juris Doctor degree in hand, Tom took a civilian job in 1977 as assistant counsel to the Naval Sea Systems Command and the Military Sealife Command in Washington, D.C. After four years, he went to work for the Sealife Command in Yokosuka, Japan for another four years.

During that time, he and Sue were adventurous travelers, visiting much of Japan and exploring South Korea, where they went to the demilitarized zone separating north and south. He looked back on those four years with special pleasure.

Tom’s final naval assignment was as counsel to the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, where he provided legal advice on ship repair contracts, fiscal law, and public international law. After seven years, he retired to Minneapolis. He and Sue spent the next seven years there before returning to the Outer Cape in 1998 to a house near Lieutenant Island in Wellfleet.

Settled in a bucolic retirement, Tom deployed his carpentry skills and knowledge of trees to develop and tend to his property. He finished the second floor of his house and groomed his acre and a third by planting new and pruning already grown trees. He was an avid reader, served on the Wellfleet Planning Board, and was a member of St. Mary of the Harbor Episcopal Church in Provincetown, whose supportive community he cherished and where he sang in the choir.

When Tom and Sue decided they wanted a dog, they emailed a summer friend who was a veterinarian in Schenectady, N.Y. The vet had taken in a Shih Tzu that had been found nearly starving in the streets. The dog was slated to be put down, but upon receiving Tom’s email, the vet gave the dog to Tom, who named him Smitty. Smitty lived another 12 years.

Tom’s intellect and photographic memory complemented his thoughtful, kind, and generous nature, said Sue. “Everyone noticed that he was almost archaically polite,” she said. “At dinner parties he would give detailed and interesting answers to questions. He never lost his gracefulness.”

Tom is survived by his wife, Susan Peters of Wellfleet; his brothers Erik Peters and wife Martha of Mason, Ohio and Mark Peters and wife Jane of Truro; nephews Frank and wife Brittany of Grafton, Ohio, Nicholas and wife Stephanie of Ames, Iowa, Gino Furlano and wife Kim of Turner, Maine, and Christopher Thompson of Wellfleet; and niece Maria Jones and husband Jeffrey of North Monmouth, Maine.

He was predeceased by his great aunt Flora Peters of Truro.

Passing on kindness was important to Tom, said Sue, who asked that he be honored with kind deeds.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in Tom’s name to St. Mary of the Harbor, 517 Commercial St., Provincetown 02657.

Funeral arrangements are private.