Peter Eichstaedt

Peter Herbert Eichstaedt died September 26 while doing what he loved-going for his daily "wog"-a walk and jog-in the Broomfield Open Space behind his home-one week shy of turning 77. A retired journalist, Peter wrote more than 14 books, produced a movie about human trafficking (Bucharest Express), and wrote several screenplays. He lived in and visited more than 50 countries for his work, covering political issues, war, and unrest. He devoted himself to learning languages and spoke fluent German and Russian, and also spoke some French, Spanish, Italian, and Dari.
Born in Saulte Saint Marie, Michigan on October 4, 1947 to Herbert Eichstaedt and Margaret Fletcher Eichstaedt, the family moved to Ohio when he was 14. He graduated from Kenston High School near Chagrin Falls, Ohio, where he lettered in football and worked in the summers as a golf caddy and as a newspaper intern for the Cleveland Press, where he first got his taste of journalism.
After graduating from high school, he went to The Ohio State University, where he worked for the student newspaper, The Lantern. He also entered the U.S. Army ROTC and served upon his graduation as an officer overseeing communications, in the former West Germany during the Vietnam War. There he earned his jump wings in the U.S. Airborne.
After his military discharge, Peter returned to the United States. He taught windsurfing in Key West for a bit with his friends, then set out on the road, Jack Kerouac-style, first to San Francisco, where he worked as a reporter for a military newspaper, then to Colorado. He stopped in Vail, Colorado, where he lived in a tent and planted trees for the U.S. Forest Service as a temporary job. After that position ended, he went into town with two dollars in his pocket, where he and his friend went to a bar and debated what to do. A man seated next to them asked if they would like to paint for him. That evening they were sleeping in a condo development they had been hired to paint for the summer. Shortly after, he and several friends started the Vail Trail, an alternative weekly newspaper in Vail.
A true journalist who believed in comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, he also enjoyed skiing in the winter and hiking and camping in the summers. There he met and married Connie H. Eichstaedt. They moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico where he took a job with the Santa Fe New Mexican.
In Santa Fe, Peter built his own adobe home in the rolling hills of Cañoncito and raised their children, Robert Parker (Indianapolis, married to Bonnie Parker, and children Joe Robert and Will), Matthew Eichstaedt (and partner Jessica Ann, and his children Jaydon, Abigayle, and Nicholas), and Ashley (Eichstaedt) Kosman (and her children Rodney and Violet). In Santa Fe Peter enjoyed a storied thirty-year career in journalism, where he received much of his inspiration for his writing. He served as the New Mexican's editorial editor, editorial writer, and state reporter at the capital. He also wrote the wildly popular column Adobe Joe, later published in a book compilation. He was managing editor for the Albuquerque Journal North, and started a freelance service for news from the capital for New Mexico newspapers. In addition to his journalism work he was a writer for the Santa Fe Indian Market and an adjunct professor of English at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. While in New Mexico he researched and wrote his first non-fiction book, If You Poison Us, about the plight of Native American uranium miners. The book is still used to this day as an example of environmental racism.
After leaving Santa Fe in the 1990s he worked for a year at The Olympian in Olympia, Washington. It was there that he applied for a Fulbright fellowship. He received three fellowships in Albania (1997), Slovenia (1998), and Moldova (1999), during which he taught journalism and covered the Balkan War.
In 2000 he accepted a post with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as the director for the International Research and Exchange Program at the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan, Armenia from 2000-2003 and taught classes at the university there. There he met his second wife, Dina Horwedel, at a Mexican restaurant where the only thing remotely resembling anything Mexican was the tequila.
Peter returned to the United States in 2003 and got the urge to travel again. In 2004 he and Dina joined the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) to train journalists and build the country's first national news agency in Kabul, Afghanistan. In 2005 he was on the road with Dina again, this time to Uganda for IWPR, where he was the country director for Uganda Radio News, the country's first-ever national radio station. There he began research for his second non-fiction book, First Kill Your Family, about the Lords Resistance Army and leader Joseph Kony and the Ugandan civil war. The book earned him the Colorado Book Award and was lauded by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Peter wrote the book in 2006 while living in Wyoming with Dina.
They married in 2007 and relocated to Broomfield, Colorado. He continued his work with IWPR for several years afterward. In 2007-08 he covered war crimes in East Africa, in Congo and Uganda and the Hague, rotating between countries. In 2011-12 he returned to Afghanistan. Upon returning to Colorado in 2012, he retired to pursue his writing full-time. His non-fiction titles include Pirate State: Inside Somalia's Terrorism at Sea, about Somalian pirates; Consuming the Congo, about the rare earth mining fueling the civil war in Eastern Congo; The Dangerous Divide: Peril and Promise on the US-Mexico Border, about the U.S.-Mexico border crisis; and Above the Din of War: Afghans Speak About Their Lives, Their Country, and Their Future-and Why America Should Listen, about what Afghan citizens think about the conflicts there. He has also contributed to anthologies, including Childhood Regained: Stories of Hope for Asian Child Workers and Guns. He turned to writing fiction and published numerous titles, including the International Hispanic Book Award-Winner Borderland; Enemy of the People, Napa Noir, The Ridge, The Correspondent, and The Hostage.
Peter was a kind and gentle soul and was beloved everywhere he went. In addition to travel, running, and writing, he was an expert skier, having learned in the Bavarian Alps in his Army years. He also loved camping, hiking, discussing politics and world affairs, was an oenophile, and never failed to miss a professional football game.
He was predeceased by his parents. He is survived by his wife, Dina (Broomfield), aforementioned children; brother Mark Eichstaedt (Windsor, California) and his wife Marylinda and their three sons and two grandchildren; sister Mary Metzler and her husband Alan Metzler (Iuka, Mississippi) and their three daughters and four grandchildren; and sister Sara McCoy and her husband Chris McCoy (Nevada City, California) and their two daughters.
A humanitarian and proponent of democracy who served his country in the military, Peter supported Kamala Harris. In lieu of flowers, the family notes he would have urged you to vote and donate in his memory to the American Indian College Fund, Planned Parenthood, or Humane Society.
As the Calabrians say, "se campu e non peru non vojgghiu u vidu jcchui' festa du celu."