Peter Anthony MacQueen

1942 - 2017

MacQueen, Peter Anthony Peter Anthony MacQueen died Thursday, (April 27, 2017) as a result of complications from dementia. He was born May 7, 1942 in Worcester, MA, eldest son of the late Beatrice A. MacQueen and Donald E. MacQueen. Raised in a bilingual family, speaking French and English, he grew up in Northborough, MA and attended Assumption Preparatory School, then Assumption College, and graduated From Clark University with a BS in biology. In 1966, while a graduate student of Biology at Case Western Reserve University, he withdrew from school, volunteered for the army, and was stationed in Korea as a Journalist with the Stars and Stripes from 1967 to 1968. He met his future wife, Hisako, while on a short trip to Tokyo at the end of his stint in Korea in 1968, and they continued a written correspondence for nearly a year until he moved to Japan to work at the Japan Times and to date Hisako. They were married in Tokyo in May 1969, and their daughter, Yuki, was born in California the following summer. After working at the San Diego Evening Tribune for six years, the young family decided to move to Japan in 1976 to ensure that their daughter was fully bilingual.There, he worked at the Kyodo News Agency for four years. Moving back to the States in 1980, he first worked as PR staff with the American Legion in Washington DC for a year and then with The Washington Times for 25 years. A truly dedicated family man, he encouraged his wife to pursue her career as a Japanese and English simultaneous interpreter, and dedicated all his free time to shuttling his daughter to all of her music lessons and weekend Japanese School. Even while working the night shift at The Washington Times, he would cut his sleep short to pick his daughter up daily from high school so that she could pursue her aspirations as a violinist. His career in journalism spanned his entire life, starting with a paper route as a child and being a copy kid at the local newspaper as a teenager. He also edited all of his daughter's essays and term papers, and made sure his wife's business correspondence and invoices were grammatically correct. He had a keen interest in genealogy, and reached out to many distant relatives to trace his ancestry back through Newfoundland to Scotland and France. He had a deep love for animals, especially the family pets, but also a general affinity for all mammals. His family would like to express their gratitude towards his coworkers at The Washington Times who treated him with dignity and kindness throughout his years with the paper. He is survived by his wife of 48 years, Hisako MacQueen of Bethesda Maryland, and his daughter, Yuki MacQueen, of Salt Lake City, Utah. Additionally, he is survived by his brother, Marc MacQueen and his wife Cheryl MacQueen of Middleboro Massachusetts; as well as his sister, Marie-Denise Prevot and her husband, Jean-Dominique Prevot of Cazals, France. He lost his other beloved sister, Laure Therese Edenburn-MacQueen of South Windsor, Connecticut to cancer in 2004. He had resided in Assisted-living since 2009, but was cared for by his wife, Hisako MacQueen prior to that. His family is extremely grateful to Maya Foster and the entire staff at Good Samaritan Assisted Living where he lived from 2009 until 2016 as well as the staff at Alfred House -Needwood, where he spent his final year. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Peter's name to BLUME Haiti (Building Leaders Using Music Education), a music education cause in which his daughter is involved. http://www. blumehaiti.org/ donate.html. A memorial service will be held, Friday, May 5th, 5 p.m., at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church, 9601 Cedar Ln., Kensington, MD 20814, 301-493- 8300. cedarlane.org Please sign the Guestbook at www.legacy.com/washingtontim