South MS remembers Sun Herald reporter embedded during Iraq war with local heroes
Patrick Peterson described himself as “business writer, musician, boat captain, grandpa” and many in South Mississippi would put at the top of that list “veteran journalist of the Iraq War.”
For the thousands of news articles he wrote in his 17 years as a reporter at the Sun Herald — and at newspapers in Jackson, Newport News, Virginia, and Melbourne, Florida — his reporting from the front lines of the Iraq War is the work for which he is most remembered.
He was embedded with Marine reservists from the Coast when the war began in 2003. He sent reports back twice a day so the families of those Marines and Coast residents concerned for their safety could see and hear and feel through his eyes, ears and experiences.
“Helicopter gunships circled overhead, unleashing Hellfire missiles into the squat mud-brick homes and firing their machine guns, raining spent cartridge cases into neighborhoods,” he wrote in March 2003, as the Marines roared through Nasiriyah. “Occasionally a tank blasted a hole in a house. Several bodies fell in alleys.”
Ten years later, he wrote: “I clearly remember how the shock wave from the cannon on an Abrams tank made the liquid in my stomach slosh.
“I remember the hiss of bullets overhead that one reporter described as an sounding like ‘angry bees,’ “ he said.
“And I remember the bodies on the ground.”
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How he’s remembered
Peterson died Friday, Oct. 21 at age 66 and a celebration of his life will be held starting at 4 p.m. Dec. 11 at the Ocean Springs Community Center, 512 Washington Ave.
Peterson died after a battle with Parkinson’s disease.
“He really was a heroic warrior on that front,” said his wife, Lisa Cook Peterson.
He also was 30 years sober.
While Peterson knew conflict, he also embraced adventure.
He took several years off from journalism to live and ski in New Mexico.
He became a boat captain in Biloxi and took people fishing and to the islands on his boat, which he named ConspiraSea.
He was a guitarist and his band, also named ConspiraSea, played at local weddings and events.
In 2005, he moved from the Sun Herald and the Mississippi Coast to the Florida coast and Florida Today in Melbourne, where he wrote about business, technology and the space program
He and his wife met online on a website called PlentyofFish.com.
“We both used it because it was free,” she said. He was living in Coco Village, Florida, and she in Orlando, where she was a musician and a professor at University of Central Florida.
They were a match, she said. Both loved music, they deep sea fished together and they were well read and could talk about anything.
“I just thought that I’d never get tired of listening to this guy talk,” she said.
He proposed at the top of the Eiffel Tower. She accepted. They were married 10 years in April and traveled to England, Scotland and throughout the U.S.
“We enjoyed traveling very much,” she said.
As his illness progressed, the couple moved to Biloxi for his final journey.
Super Dad
“He wanted to come here and be here and hang out with us,” said his daughter, Alix Peterson Dearing. She and her husband, Mike Dearing, and their children, Lorelei and Zachary, made it a year of memories.
“He and the kids had a lot of fun,” she said. Her father could fix “anything out of anything,” and she tells how he fashioned a T-ball stand out of a brick and a bamboo shoot for her son.
“They just loved their Papa so much,” she said.
She and her father shared a special relationship.
“He was very hands on. Always there. Always up for trips and shenanigans,” she said.
They had a standing date on Wednesdays. After her dance class, they went to the Schooner restaurant, “Sat in the same place had the same food,” she said. His po-boy was always shrimp and hers was roast beef.
“I actually had my rehearsal dinner there when I got married,” she said.
She was 18 when her father went to Iraq the first time.
“I was very scared,” she said. The day President Bush declared war, “I freaked out for a minute,” she said. Then she found peace knowing he was there with Marines from the Coast.
“They were watching him and taking care of him,” she said.
He went back two more times with the Gulfport Seabees.
The first time, she said, there was a big to-do as the Sun Herald covered his homecoming, and many of the Marines’ families and the community who followed his reports came to the airport to welcome him back.
The second time, his family rented a limo to greet him on his return.
“The third time he came back it was just me,” she said, and she joked with him that he was losing his shine.
At war
All these interests and experiences made Peterson “a perfect journalist in some ways,” said Stan Tiner, executive editor at the Sun Herald during Peterson’s tenure.
“He was a tall, handsome man,” and people were drawn to him, Tiner said.
“Patrick had an easy way with people so they wanted to tell their stories to him,” he said.
Peterson was the Sun Herald’s military reporter when U.S. troops were heading to the Middle East for a possible war with Iraq.
Journalists were being embedded to give first-hand accounts of the war.
“I always applauded his bravery and putting his own life on the line to tell the story of the local Marines and sailors,” said Tiner, who served in Vietnam as a combat correspondent.
“I worried constantly about his safety,” said Tiner, who had to sign a document making himself the person the military would contact if something happened to Peterson.
“He was subject to the same dangers as the service members,” said Tiner, who was “quite relieved” when Peterson returned unscathed.
Giving his best during the worst
“This has been the pinnacle of my career,” Peterson said upon his return. “It’s been the most interesting. It’s really exciting. And I felt like I was doing something that was really important.”
Tiner said Peterson’s stories ran on the front page, telling of the conditions faced by the local Marine reserve unit made up of members from across the Coast, and providing a lifeline between them and their families back home.
“I went three weeks without a shower on the trip to Baghdad,” Peterson said in an interview. “You used baby wipes and towelettes to clean yourself up as much as you could.”
Those 80 reservists from Gulfport drove 27-ton amphibious vehicles to Baghdad carrying Marine infantrymen from California, Peterson said.
“I knew all their names,” he said. “I let the ones with pregnant wives use my satellite phone to call home. Several of them died on later tours as the insurgent attacks increased. At least one committed suicide.”
Peterson lived with and reported on the Marines for three months on the push into and the fall of Baghdad.
“Patrick chose the path of risk in order to go where he had not gone before, and he carried all of us with him and with the Gulfport Marines as they marched through the very gates of Baghdad itself,” Tiner said in a report after Peterson’s return. “His digital camera, computer and satellite phone gave us coverage of the war as has seldom, perhaps never, been seen in the annals of warfare.”
Celebration of life
A celebration of Peterson’s life is being planned in November on the Coast so his former colleagues, friends and fellow veterans can honor him.
Until then, they share their memories and tributes:
▪ “Patrick was a beautiful man and crazy about his daughter and grandchildren,” said Karen Nelson, who worked with Peterson at the Sun Herald and at the Jackson Daily News. “More than his career, he was a musician, a boat captain, an adventurer.”
▪ “Early in my career, I decided Peterson was a good reporter with whom to work,” said long time Sun Herald photographer and author Tim Isbell. “Usually, I’d put a bunch of prints of my latest photo project on his desk and ask if he had time to provide the words to my pictures. I can’t think of a time when he refused.” They worked together on the “People Within” Vietnamese project and many other stories.
▪ “He was always kind, always helpful. He was one of the best writers I’ve ever known, but, more importantly, he was one of the best people I’ve ever known. The world is not as good without him in it, but I am grateful that I got to call him friend,” said former Sun Herald reporter Melissa Scallan.
▪ “A few years after leaving Jackson, I hired Patrick in Newport News, VA, where I came to realize how special his writing talent was,” said Thomas Clifford. “Then, later still, I made sure we landed him in the Florida Today newsroom, where he crushed several beats and spread a Yoda-like serenity to everyone he met.”
This story was originally published October 25, 2022 at 10:14 AM.
