Born in Hinsdale, Montana, and raised in Alexandria, Minnesota, Everett Vinson Peterson (1915-1944) graduated from high school in 1933 and joined the Minnesota National Guard. He attended the University of Minnesota, graduating in 1939 with a degree in Business Administration. In 1940, Peterson volunteered for active duty and was stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas. Two years later he married Austin native Frances "Bunnie" Rice (1922-1946) who had lived in Dallas for most of her life before attending college at the Texas School of Mines in El Paso and the University of Texas at Austin. In January 1944, Peterson was sent overseas with the Battery B 197th Antiaircraft Battalion and died on D-Day, June 6, 1944, on Omaha Beach. His body was repatriated from St. Laurent, France, in Sept. 1947 and buried at Fort Snelling, Minnesota.
The year of her father's death, Carolyn Clifton Peterson (b. 1944) was born in Austin. After her mother died in 1946, she lived with her aunt, Mrs. Charles Braselton Jr., in Fort Worth. Carolyn attended the University of Texas, graduating in 1966 as a Phi Beta Pi sister, and married Peyton Lambeth Townsend, Jr. of Dallas in 1969.
From the guide to the Peterson-Townsend Family Papers 2001-050., 1915-1992 (bulk 1938-1944), (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin)
