Deceased May 8, 2021
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In Memory
Peter John Leach was born ca. 1935 in Ladue, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis, the son of Dorothy and John Herbert Leach. He died at the age of 86 on May 8, 2021 of complications from a fall in November 2020.
Peter prepared for Amherst in 1954 at the John Burroughs School, a private nonsectarian high school in Ladue. At Amherst, he majored in English, participated in swimming, worked on the literary magazine and was in the Masquers.
After graduating from Amherst, Peter earned a master of fine arts degree in playwriting at the Yale School of Drama on a Merrill Fellowship from Amherst.
After Yale, Peter served two years in the U.S. Army, stationed in Germany; got a job writing picture captions for The Saturday Evening Post; and taught writing courses at Stephens College in Missouri and at Bryn Mawr. There he married Eleanor Winsor, a classics professor at Bryn Mawr and later The University of Texas at Austin. At our 15th reunion in 1973, Peter reported, “Since finally beginning to get some fiction published, I am basically living off my wife.” He assumed that she must get some vicarious satisfaction from his writing or she would kick him out.
Eleanor’s investment in Peter apparently paid off. According to his extended obituary, which you can find on his College webpage, Peter went on to receive a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, an O. Henry Award; a Gival Press Novel Award for Best Regional Fiction, Midwest; and other accolades. He also taught writing at a number of venues.
Eleanor herself, who predeceased Peter in 2018 at the age of 80, went on to become an award-winning and acclaimed professor of classics. She and Peter are survived by their daughter, Harriet Leach.
Ned Megargee ’58