Mike Petersen
grew up in Rock Island and attended Grant Elementary School and
Franklin Jr. High before moving on to high school. At age
eleven, he joined the YMCA swim team, and that was the start of
his swimming career. After high
school, Mike attended the University of Iowa on a swimming
scholarship. In the '60s, the AAU was not yet well
organized, and no money was provided to athletes. They
were all on their own. In the summer of 1963, however,
Olympic development events were held across the U.S., including
one at Rock Island's Long View Park. Mike won the
400-meter freestyle event. Unfortunately, his swimming
career was put on hold about six months later when he came down
with pleurisy. After
graduating from Iowa in 1966 with a bachelor's degree in foreign
languages and literature, he went to Montreal, Canada to work on
a graduate degree in French education. He ended up
teaching English as a foreign language in a French-speaking high
school. That same year, Mike became engaged to
Beckie Ogden (RIHS '65). He and Beckie met years earlier
at the Long View Park swimming pool, and I think Mike was
smiling as he recalled how she was wearing a yellow and black
striped swim suit. He called it her bumble bee suit, says
she stung his heart and that he never recovered.
In March 1968,
Mike returned to the Quad Cities from Canada and entered the
U.S. Army as a second lieutenant. In May, when he had a
break, he and Beckie were married. After spending a week
at the Wisconsin Dells, Mike flew back to Ft. Benning, Georgia
for parachute training. Beckie remained in the Quad Cities
to complete nursing school at Moline Public Hospital. She
graduated a month later and joined Mike at Ft. Benning. After
Ft. Benning, Mike was assigned to the 82nd Airborne
Division at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina for a year and a half and
then to Baltimore for a short time. Next he went to Vietnam, and Beckie returned to the Quad Cities. In March 1971, Mike came
home, and they went back to Ft. Bragg.
Their
daughter, Ingrid, was born in 1969 at Ft. Bragg. Four years
later, their son, Matthew, was born at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona
while Mike and Beckie were there for Mike's Officer Advanced
Course. After Ft. Huachuca, the Petersens again returned to Ft.
Bragg. Two years
later, Mike got orders to go to Monterey, California to study
the Persian Farsi language spoken in Iran. There he was selected
for the Foreign Area Officer Program involving graduate study,
language training, in-country tour, and follow-on specialist
assignments. After a year in Monterey, the Petersen family moved to Tehran, Iran. It was a year of in-country training for Mike where he was to grease his language skills and travel around Iran so that he could be an advisor on military affairs to the U.S. military on Iran. Mike says the most exciting experience during their one-year stay in Iran was a 40-day road trip from Tehran through Afghanistan and Pakistan into India and back. "“It was a wonderful journey." Mike shares that he had a not-so-serious car accident in the Khyber Pass when he was momentarily disoriented because, in Pakistan, they drive on the left side of the road. He says, "It's hard to drive on the wrong side of the street." Mike's children attended U.S. military schools in Iran and learned a few words of the language. Ingrid had a friend whose name she thought was Nahar. Each day she would go to the friend's house and ask for Nahar. She would say "Nahar, Nahar" hoping to play with her friend. She came back home and told her parents that the neighbors always fed her. She eventually learned that "nahar" meant "lunch." After Iran,
Mike was assigned to Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas where he helped
manage the Allied Officer Program for about 100 foreign officers
from about 50 nations attending the Command and General Staff
College every year. While there, Beckie decided to return to
nursing part-time to begin saving for Ingrid's and Matthew's
college expenses. After three
years at Ft. Leavenworth, it was on to Heidelberg, Germany.
There the family learned to ski and did lots of sightseeing.
They were in Germany for two years before returning to the U.S. Mike then
had six months of school at Norfolk, Virginia before being sent
to the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland where he was the
executive officer and later commander of a military intelligence
battalion for three and a half years. In 1987, he
was assigned to the Pentagon for two years as the Executive
Secretary of the DOD Military Intelligence Board. In 1990, he
got orders to go to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the
Congo) where he served as the Senior Defense Representative and
Defense and Army Attaché to five French-speaking African
countries. In 1987,
Ingrid graduated from high school in Aberdeen and enrolled at
Illinois State University, graduating from there in 1991 and
moving back to the D. C. area. She later returned to school and
earned credentials to teach higher-level math in the Maryland
STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)
program. She and her husband, Greg, live in the Annapolis area
and have an 8-year-old son, Logan, in addition to Ingrid's adult
stepdaughter, Amanda. While the
Petersens were in Africa, their son, Matthew, graduated from the
American School of Kinshasa. He has degrees in English and
accounting from West Virginia University and earned his CPA. He
is the chief purchasing and accounting officer for a railroad
equipment manufacturer in the Pittsburgh area. Matthew and his
wife, Courtney, have three children: Noah, 8, Chloe, 6, and
Hunter, 4. In
September 1992, the Petersens came back to the U.S. where Mike
was assigned to the D. C. area and the Defense Intelligence
Agency. In 1994, he retired from the Army as a full colonel. For the next six months, he served as military advisor to the Northern Virginia Community College in the D. C. area. From 1994 to 2007, he also served as a DOD Military Intelligence Specialist in the D. C. area. In February 2007, he retired completely. Beckie
worked as a nurse at Ft. Leavenworth and in Germany and was also
a clinic nurse in Zaire. After riots in Zaire and the evacuation
of civilians, she remained there as part of the U.S. Embassy
medical staff. Beckie returned to the U.S. followed by Mike a
year later. She continued her nursing career for another ten
years, retiring in 2001. She and Mike have also been caring for
her mother who moved to the East Coast near them and passed away
recently. Mike proudly adds that Beckie always greatly supported
him in his career and their moves, and he deeply appreciated
that. Every other
year, the whole Petersen family gets together at a different
location with each family having their own condo. They all enjoy
breakfast together followed by selected activities during the
day, and then they gather for games again in the evening. This
is in addition to random times together during the year and the
every-year event of the Army-Navy game. In addition
to enjoying many fun-filled hours with their children and
grandchildren, Mike and Beckie like working around their home in
Odenton, Maryland and are actively involved with their Missouri
Synod Lutheran Church where Beckie leads a Bible study group and
Mike is head elder and president of the congregation. They like
to "poke around" old houses and historical areas and play pocket
billiards at the Odenton O'Malley Senior Center where they enter
tournaments and enjoy the fun and camaraderie. They also are
into "fine dining," which Mike describes as "“finding the hidden
mom and pop places with really good food such as those on the TV
show, Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives." Although they also enjoy
dining out for special events, with French cuisine being their
favorite, Mike says that few if any restaurants anywhere can
compare with Beckie's great cooking. February
will find Mike and Beckie in Florida, and following the
September 50-year class reunion, they will head west to
Colorado, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and the Black Hills. Looking back at high school, Mike says he
regrets not knowing more of his fellow students because he was
so focused on swimming that he didn't get as involved with them
as he should have.
He spent his time working out and traveling with the swim team.
He does, however, look back fondly on the special bond formed by
those team members through their time spent together, and he
looks forward to seeing everyone at the 50th reunion. You can get
in touch with Mike at
maprlp@verizon.net
Below is a picture of the fifth grade class at Grant
Elementary. Can you help identify some of these
classmates?
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