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Charlotte Peer FAC '74-'76      † 15 January 2007 †
Mathematics


1974
1975
1976

from fredericksburg.com

Charlotte K. Peer

Date published: 1/25/2007

Charlotte K. Peer

Charlotte Kahalialiihou Peer, 80, of Stafford County passed away Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2007. She had been ill for several years from kidney disease and a hemorrhagic stroke.

A Scottish Hawaiian, born in Hilo, Hawaii, she was the oldest of four children born to Keawe Bell and Hubertha Cox.

The family moved to Honolulu in 1940 when her father was hired by the U.S. Navy as a refrigeration engineer at Pearl Harbor.

Charlotte attended Kammehamena High School. She witnessed the Dec. 7 attack on Pearl Harbor from the heights of Kammehamena school. Graduating in 1944, she and three other girls from "Kam" sailed to the states in a troop ship, compliments of the U.S. Navy. All four girls had been accepted by Texas Women's College at Denton. She graduated in 1946 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics.

In order to reduce the financial burden on her parents, she completed her degree requirements in 2 years.

She attended graduate school at Perdue, where she was included in an early project that calculated missile trajectories. Subsequently, she was employed in San Antonio, Texas, as an engineering mathematics specialist to an oil field research company engaged in a review of unproductive Permian Basin wells.

When the Korean War broke out, she was hired by the Air Force Security Service as a traffic analyst. She graduated from the second "MOS 709" course ever conducted by that command.

She met her husband, William Peer, in 1952, when he returned from service in Korea and Japan. They were married in 1953. They had two sons, Mark and Keith Peer.

As an Air Force wife, she spent 15 years overseas at Chicksands, England, and Zweibrucken, Germany, two tours in Berlin, Germany, and four years in Wakkanai, Japan.

Like many women of her generation, she held several jobs as well as caring for her sons and husband. She taught mathematics at the junior high school level in San Angelo, Texas; Berlin, Germany; and Wakkanai, Japan. She also taught traffic analysis skills in the security service schools at March Air Force Base, Calif., and at Goodfellow Air Force Base, San Angelo, Calif.

She managed the H&R Block tax office in Garrisonville for 25 years, retiring in 2005.

Charlotte was preceded in death by her parents; a sister, Leiloni Eidson of Fort Sumpter, S.C.; and a brother, William Bell Jr. of Oceanport, N.J.

She is survived by her husband, William Peer; her son, Mark Peer and his wife, Lisa, of Pearisburg; and her grandchildren, Charlotte Anne and James Wright, Keith Peer and his wife, Stacey, and Zachary and Alyssa of Coral Springs, Fla.; her brother, Alex "Blackie" Bell of Kaneohe, Hawaii; and 16 nephews and nieces.

A viewing will begin at 2 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 27, at Aquia Episcopal Church, where a celebration of her life will take place at 3 p.m.

Memorial donations may be made to The Salvation Army, Box 179, Fredericksburg, Va. 22404.

Mullins & Thompson Funeral Service, Stafford Chapel, is handling the arrangements.