At first, Michael refused to let them go. Patty persisted and eventually convinced him to allow the girls to go for a year and see if it worked out. Margaret and Martha were only told that they were going for a visit.
The 6- and 7-year-olds boarded the plane and flew off by themselves. The Geislings spoke very little English, making the transition more difficult. After a week, the girls were told to call them Mom and Dad. Margaret was confused.
No sooner had she accepted the reality of this change in her life than the rug was pulled out from under her feet again. The couple changed their mind about the adoption. The girls flew back to North Carolina. They cried all the way back across the Atlantic Ocean.
Michael was now working with a literary agent. Over a two-year period, the two men labored over changes to the manuscript about the Vietnam War that Michael began writing when he was stationed in Japan. They pounded and polished every chapter, every page, every word to prepare it for the marketplace.
It was sold to Simon & Schuster for an advance of $600,000. A Time of War was released in hardcover in 1990. Michael Peterson had made it.
The dedication in his masterpiece read:
To Patty, who suffered all my wounds.
To Clayton and Todd, whose suffering, I pray, is
only in my nightmares.
To the dead.
And to those whose suffering cannot be relieved.
Although he claimed to love Martha and Margaret as if they were his own, he neglected to mention them.
A Time of War was described as a cross between Tom Clancy and Graham Greene. The book was set in the midst of war in Vietnam and filled with high-level espionage, acts of personal bravery and both heterosexual and homosexual escapades. Noted authors praised it with enthusiasm. It was heady stuff for any writer and it propelled Michael onto the New York Times Best Seller List.
When the book was released in a paperback edition, Publishers Weekly added their praise, but with a caveat: “Peterson adroitly evokes embassy intrigue and his battle scenes are immediate and compelling. Some readers may be taken aback by the powerful, troubled current of sexuality, however.”
One evening soon after Margaret and Martha had returned from their 1990 summer trip to Rhode Island, Margaret tattled on Martha. She told Michael that her younger sister did not say her good-night prayers. To him, the child sounded self-righteous. He thought her attitude was unhealthy and unwholesome. And Michael knew who to blame.
He fired off an angry letter to Margaret Blair on July 18, 1990. “The girls had a terrific time with you, and I thank you very much. My only concern is with the heavy dose of religion they—Margaret in particular—brought back. It borders slightly on fundamentalist fanaticism that Liz was utterly opposed to.”
He informed her that Patty accepted a job offer to teach at the same school in Germany again. He and all four children were going back with her to live together as a family. He then lashed out at Margaret for wanting to adopt the two girls. It was, he said, out of the question. “They absolutely need me.”
He rejected the importance of the girls’ bond with the Blair family. “Believe me, if I thought that it would be better for Martha and Margaret to live with you, or that you could better raise them, then I would step aside, but deep in my heart I believe that I am the best person to mould and guide them—and love them too.”
The Peterson clan moved back to Germany. It was a brief and bitter family experiment. Soon, Michael returned to Durham with Martha and Margaret. He left his two boys with their mother in Germany.
At the end of the school year in 1991, Patty came back to the States with her boys. She drove Margaret and Martha up to Rhode Island and told the Blairs they could adopt the girls. She said that she and Michael were separating, and Margaret and Martha needed a stable home environment. By this time, Michael had moved in with Kathleen Atwater and her daughter, Caitlin.
Margaret Blair had heard about their nanny, Barbara, from Liz and from her mother. Now, she heard from Barbara for the first time. Barbara was delighted about the impending adoption. She asked if she could send the girls mementoes and a tape of a German song she used to sing to them.
Margaret was pleased with Barbara’s continued interest in the girls and encouraged it. Throughout the summer, Barbara called the girls, sent them short notes and arranged for the delivery of little posies to them from a flower shop.
One day in late August, Margaret Blair answered the phone. A hostile Mike Peterson was on the other end. He told her that he had no idea that Patty left the girls to be adopted. He said it was his decision—only his—and totally up to him.
He was coming to Rhode Island. He would take the Blairs out to dinner and announce his decision on whether or not they could keep the girls. Kathleen and Caitlin made the trip north with him and they stayed at the Biltmore in Providence.
Michael changed his story, telling Margaret and Jim that he would leave the decision up to the two girls. The Blairs knew how Margaret felt. She had complained to them that she had no privacy in the Peterson home—all of her mail was opened by Michael.
Michael, Kathleen and Caitlin sat down with Margaret and Martha to discuss the future. When Margaret suggested that she might want to live with her aunt and uncle, Michael said: “I leave this choice up to you. But I’m telling you that your mother never—never—wanted you to live with your Aunt Margaret. Never. But I’m leaving the decision up to you.”
With that level of emotional pressure, 10-year-old Margaret and 9-year-old Martha succumbed. They said they wanted to live in Durham, but it looked as if they had been out-manipulated by Mike Peterson. From that day forward, Mike discouraged any visits to Rhode Island.
On September 11, 1991, Patty Peterson wrote a letter expressing her dismay to Margaret and Jim Blair. “Since learning of the removal of Margaret and Martha from your home, one week after the fact, I have been in a state of profound shock and physical unwellness. I offer to you both deeply felt apology, as I came to you in good faith. I sorrow that you and your children received the girls into your family with open hearts, and then were subject to their arbitrary departure.”
She went on to emote her disdain for the actions of her estranged husband: “The present situation is anathema to my very soul.” She reiterated her willingness for the Blairs to adopt the girls and concluded the letter on a solemn note: “I do not believe, however, that it was Elizabeth’s will that her daughters be subject to frequent dislocation nor that the family of her friend and two sons be destroyed.”
Now, Patty and Mike Peterson were separated. Kathleen Hunt Atwater was divorced from her husband, Fred. The three girls in the two households formed the link that launched the intriguing, successful novelist and the ambitious and beautiful dark-blonde engineer with gray-green eyes into orbit together. The stage was set for romance, extravagance and tragedy.
KATHLEEN HUNT ATWATER PETERSON
“Life is too important to waste a single moment.”
–Kathleen
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Wanting a better life and believing the myth that the streets of America were paved with gold, the parents of John Franklin Hunt moved to Boston from Newfoundland, a maritime province of Canada, just before his birth in 1899. His father’s death two years later left his mother in desperate straits. John was working to help support the family by the time he was 10 years old. The family soon moved to New York.
John learned the brick-laying trade in his new country and attended Cooper Union College. After completing his education, he started his own construction company.
In the 1940s, he was sub-contracting for another construction company. A young secretary there caught his eye. Veronica Ann Hogan, a New York native 21 years his junior, was responsive to his flirtation.
Veronica’s father had died two days after Christmas when she was 16 years old. Her daughters thought she may have seen a substitute father figure in the older John Hunt, or perhaps she was looking for a way out of a hardscrabble existence. W
hatever the motivation, Veronica fell in love. The couple married in 1946.
They did not stay in New York. They moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where their first child, Steven Desmond Hunt, was born on January 23, 1951. The family then moved to Greensboro, North Carolina. There on February 21, 1953, Kathleen Morris “Kathy” Hunt first made her appearance.
The family settled in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1955 and grew by the addition of another daughter, Candace Susan Hogan Hunt. A third girl, Lori Anne Hunt, was born five years later when John Hogan was 63 years old.
Both John and Veronica stressed the value of education to their children. John, unlike many men born in the nineteenth century, believed it was important for his daughters to go to college. He emphasized to his girls the need to have career objectives.
Although Veronica did not have a college education, she was a life-long learner. All of the children made their first trip to the library when they were 2 years old. Every evening, the family gathered at a dinner table stacked with books. A dictionary and encyclopedia were omnipresent. If any question was raised during mealtime conversation, Veronica had the resources at her fingertips to find the answers.
Steve was a protective and proud older brother. He was also ambitious at an early age, drawing his sisters into entrepreneurial schemes. In one instance, he supervised while his sisters wove fabric loops on a plastic loom to make potholders. Then he escorted them door-to-door as they peddled their wares to their neighbors.
All three girls were members of the Girls Club that met at their elementary school Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Each month, the most exemplary one in the group was named “Girl of the Month.” Every year, one person was selected to be “Girl of the Year.” In seventh grade, this honor fell to Kathy. She advanced to the next level of competition, vying with others who had won the same award in other clubs. Kathy came out on top, winning the coveted title of “Lancaster Lass.”
Kathy carried her ambition to succeed into high school. She was president of the debating club and editor of the school magazine, Generation, at McCaskey High School. She played on the tennis team and volunteered at St. Joseph’s Hospital.
She was the first student selected to take advanced Latin classes at the local college, Franklin & Marshall. She graduated first in her class of 473 and was selected for publication in Who’s Who in American High School Students.
In 1971, Kathy Hunt earned a singular and historic honor—she was the first woman ever admitted to Duke University’s School of Engineering. Her qualifications were so exceptional that admission was a breeze. When her brother Steve left for Virginia Military Institute to study engineering two years earlier, his badge of honor was his slide rule. Times had changed by the time Kathleen went off to school—she carried a $160 Texas Instruments calculator.
As an undergraduate, she was a contributing editor to DukEngineer magazine. She lived on the third floor of her dormitory. In a pair of wooden-soled Dr. Scholl’s sandals, she raced up and down the stairs amazing everyone with her coordination and agility.
When she came home after the first semester, she informed her family that she was no longer Kathy—she was now Kathleen. When Candy asked her to please pass the salt, Kathleen picked up both the salt and the pepper and instructed her younger sisters that passing them together was proper etiquette.
Kathleen took a Physics class in the summer of 1972. Her parents suspected that something more than academics drove this decision. They packed up the family and drove from Pennsylvania to Durham to find out what it was. When they met Fred Atwater, a graduate student and a teaching assistant in the Physics Department, the reason was clear.
Kathleen and Fred’s relationship started with trips out for coffee after his evening office hours. Kathleen spent her spare time thinking up intelligent questions to ask in order to impress Fred. And it worked.
To Fred, she was an intelligent and thoughtful young woman eager to discuss points of philosophy and life itself. Besides being smart, she was very sweet. She was the kind of person who would do nice things for other people for no reason at all. And, Fred thought, she was very attractive.
After the summer session, Kathleen went home to Lancaster for a few weeks. When she returned to Duke for the fall semester, she and Fred started dating.
During the summer of 1973, Kathleen took her first career-oriented job as a junior engineer at Huth Engineers in Lancaster. The next summer, she was a junior engineer at W.M. Piatt & Company in Durham.
She graduated from Duke with a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering in 1975. She and Fred married on August 3 of that year in a civil ceremony at a magistrate’s office in Durham. No family members from either side were present, but a handful of college friends were there to witness the exchange of vows.
The newlyweds took a trip to Kathleen’s home later that month. Veronica and John welcomed them with open arms and threw a reception in their honor.
Kathleen and Fred returned to Duke to further their education. Fred continued his work on his doctorate in Physics, and Kathleen pursued a master’s degree in Civil Engineering. She worked as a teaching assistant in the department in the first year of graduate school and as a research assistant both years.
In May 1976, she made her first professional presentation at the American Society of Civil Engineers conference at Waterloo in Canada. The subject was a futuristic look at magnetic power as a basis for transportation.
The Atwaters moved to Columbia, Maryland, when Fred finished his doctorate and accepted a position in research at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. They bought their first home there and Candace was a frequent visitor. She enjoyed hanging with the couple whenever she could.
In February 1977, Kathleen finished her master’s thesis. She turned down an offer from Procter & Gamble because Fred did not want to relocate, and accepted a position as applications engineer at Baltimore Aircoil-Pritchard, a subsidiary of Merck & Co., specializing in the construction and repair of large-scale, field-erected cooling towers for use in industry and at power-generating facilities.
For more than two years, Kathleen tried to get pregnant. She was becoming impatient and frustrated with her lack of success. Her long wait came to an end in the summer of 1981. She went to her doctor’s office for a test on the morning of her husband’s 35th birthday. The results were positive.
She greeted Fred that evening with ribbons wrapped all around her body. “Your birthday present is here,” she told him. The couple was jubilant. Fred and Kathleen took birthing classes together—Kathleen practiced her breathing and Fred learned proper coaching techniques. They awaited the arrival of their first child with unbridled excitement.
1982 was a banner year for Kathleen. She moved into the executive stratosphere at BAC—Pritchard with a promotion to Product Manager for Engineered Products. Her responsibilities included goal setting, cost analysis, purchasing, developing marketing plans and writing catalogues.
The most fulfilling day of all, though, was April 27, when Kathleen gave birth to Caitlin Veronica Atwater. There was a small setback in their birthing plans when Caitlin was breech. It made a Caesarian section necessary, but Fred was there by her side just the same. He was overwhelmed with awe the moment he first saw his daughter and quite pleased that his secret preference for a girl was satisfied.
After ten years of bad health, Kathleen’s father died before Caitlin was two years old. After forty years of marriage, Veronica Hunt was a widow. Her granddaughter was too young to understand the paroxysms of grief that swirled around her. Caitlin would be older before loss laid its lonely hand on her head.
While ambitious and purposeful in her career, Kathleen still made time to revel in the daughter she adored. Living in nearby Columbia, Maryland, the family often traveled to Washington, D.C. At a young age, Kathleen introduced Caitlin to the Smithsonian museums in the nation’s capital.
Caitlin and her mother’s favorites were the paintings of Mary Cassatt. Her frequent use of mother/dau
ghter themes in her work evoked emotion in both of them. Caitlin developed an early love of standing in a room filled with artwork and absorbing its power.
Each trip to D.C. ended with a ride on the carousel. The Smithsonian National Zoological Park, however, was the major source of magic and wonder. On one occasion, Caitlin and Kathleen stood entranced watching as a baby giraffe was born. They went to the gift shop that day and bought a breakfast plate and mug to commemorate the event. Every Mother’s Day, Caitlin would serve Kathleen’s breakfast with these mementoes.
In 1986, Fred was on the hunt for a new job. He got offers from a number of companies, including ones in Long Island, Philadelphia and Raleigh-Durham. It was an easy choice. The couple enjoyed the area when they attended Duke, so they headed back south to North Carolina.
Fred began his new position at GTE Government Systems right away. Kathleen took a break from her career to set up their new home in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Durham, and get to know the neighbors. The Atwaters also bought a sailboat. Kathleen shared Fred’s love of sailing and loved to drive down to Washington, North Carolina, and set sail down the Pamlico River to the Pamlico Sound and on to the Outer Banks.
Caitlin loved when her grandmother, Veronica Hunt, came to visit their new home. Her attachment to this grandparent was magnified by the similarities between Veronica and Kathleen. Both were quick-witted and their banter rocked any room with laughter. They displayed similar mannerisms and possessed a deep well of nurture. Whether Veronica lived in Pennsylvania or Virginia or Florida, she showed up for every one of her granddaughter’s birthday parties in addition to spending many weekends at Kathleen’s home. Caitlin grew up knowing that, like her mother, her grandmother would always be there for her.
Written in Blood Page 11