Leslie `Pep' Peery - Musician, Sportsman - Always On The Go

It was no mistake when someone, probably during his years at Ballard High School, came up with the nickname "Pep" for Leslie Peery.

Mr. Peery's life was an endless blur of writing, music, sports, union activity, tour-bus driving and streetcar conducting. He also spent 24 years as a Seattle firefighter.

He was playing music up until last year when a series of falls slowed him down, said his son, David Peery, a Seattle resident. Mr. Peery, who lived in the same Green Lake home for the past 40 years, died Saturday at age 78.

"He had so much pep as a young man and it carried over to his later years," explained David Peery.

"He was always upbeat," said his daughter, Marilyn Thompson, of Richland, who said that he often communicated with his wife, Alice, by note because they would miss each other at home because both had jobs and because of her father's activities.

"He ate and ran and wasn't home a whole lot. If there were dirty dishes in the sink, Dad had been home," Thompson said. "He loved being with people."

Mr. Peery learned music and how to play the four-string banjo at Ballard High School and it set in motion an association that never ended.

He formed and played in many bands and for years his bands - either the Men of Note, or his Dixieland band, The Firehouse Five, Plus Three - played at the Seattle Center for dances for seniors and others.

Mr. Peery also quickly learned to play many other instruments,

Thompson said.

At one point he was asked to join the Seattle Symphony but declined because he could not read music or use a bow with the bass, she explained.

Before he married, Mr. Peery joined bands on the old President Lines and cruised to the Orient playing for ship passengers, David Peery said.

Mr. Peery visited China and Japan during some of those trips. He also traveled with bands to Hawaii and Alaska.

Mr. Peery joined the Seattle Fire Department in the mid 1940's and retired in the late 1960's after 24 years. A routine medical test revealed that Mr. Peery had a heart attack some six months earlier.

Earlier, the Fire Department also put an end to Mr. Peery's soccer playing because of injuries. "He'd play on Sundays and come limping in on Mondays, so they ordered him to stop playing soccer," David Peery said.

Soccer was a sport Mr. Peery played in grade school and he spent many years as a player and coach, and writer and announcer for the sport. He coached the soccer team at Assumption School in northeast Seattle.

During in the 1960's and 1970's, Mr. Peery reported on soccer matches for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Earlier, he wrote soccer stories for the old Seattle Star, David Peery said.

But that's not all. Mr. Peery also was a baseball player of some note, playing semi-pro baseball, which included a stint with the old Everett Seagulls.

After Mr. Peery retired from the Fire Department, he drove a Gray Line Tour bus, ferrying tourists around the city, indicating points of interest.

Thompson asked one time what he would do if he couldn't answer questions from the tourists about the city. "I just make it up. They don't know anyway," came her father's reply, Thompson recalled. "He had a line that never quit," she added.

Mr. Peery also was a member of the Musicians Association of Seattle, local 76, for 47 years and served on its board of directors.

Chet Ramage, president of the union and a longtime friend, remembers Mr. Peery "as the kind of man when you needed him he was there to help you. Those of us who have worked with him are far richer for having that opportunity."

Besides his son and daughter, Mr. Peery is survived by five grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

Funeral services were to be held today, March 4, at the Green Lake Funeral Home. Burial was to be at Evergreen-Washelli.