He told his Armco supervisor he wanted “something better.”
His boss suggested college.
So Peck took an aptitude test that pointed him toward a career in agriculture medicine.
This was like a coach handing Babe Ruth a baseball bat and telling him to take a few swings.
During World War II, Dr. Peck, a commissioned officer, attended Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine and was assigned to the Bureau of Animal Industry, a unit devoted to the detection and eradication of cattle disease.
Peck, now 94, began his veterinarian business in a converted carriage house on the Sorg Mansion property in the mid-1940s, then purchased a 40-acre farm in Madison Twp., and moved his practice there after eight years.
He sold his practice to Dr. Merlin Owsalt 32 years ago, and Dr. Stephanie Burk runs the practice now.
“That’s something the practice has lasted that long,” said Peck, who lives in Mount Pleasant Retirement Village with his wife of 69 years, Ida Mae. “I’m very proud of that.”
Even following retirement, every time Dr. Peck was recognized in public, a former client would ask, “Do you remember me, doc?”
He didn’t recognize their face.
“If you had your dog with you, I’d remember you,” he told them.
His eyesight and hearing are failing, but his sense of humor is drier than our grass.
Dallas Sturgill, 67, who worked in the kennel as a child, said Peck never killed a spider, and he hated euthanizing dogs.
Sometimes, Sturgill, said, Peck nursed an ill dog back to health with chicken soup.
Now Peck, a longtime president of the Madison school board, needs that same kind of affection.
He recently had surgery to remove squamous cell cancer from his skull.
“He wants to live,” said Kim Steele, his granddaughter.
Peck, who appeared to be napping at times during a recent interview, got emotional. Tears welled in his eyes.
“That hit a chord,” he said through tears.
His wife leaned over and dabbed his tears with a tissue:
“We do this a lot together,” she said. “We went through this yesterday, too. We’ve had a good life together.”
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