Fate has played well with Gary Peck's life

When he left his athletics career behind at the University of Montana in the spring of 1966, he was one of UM's most decorated athletes.

Peck probably is the last three-sport athlete UM has ever produced that accomplished it in four years. Scott Zanon of Kalispell lettered in three sports, but stayed an extra year to earn his football monogram.

Peck, retired since 1994 after years heading up the Glacier Insurance Agency, considers his life "pleasantly boring with golf, fishing, hunting and enjoying sports."

He splits each year between Palm Desert, Calif., where he spends about five months at Bermuda Dunes Country Club, and Libby, where his oldest son, Kevin, now owns the insurance business.

After working on a master's degree Peck, in school as the Viet Nam War was escalating, signed up for Navy Officer Candidate School and spent six years in the military, getting to Viet Nam only once.

The rest of his hitch was spent doing administrative duties, including serving as an aide to an admiral in the office of the commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command (CINCPAC).

Peck was able to make good use of his athletic abilities while in the Navy. In fact, one of his biggest sports milestones occurred just before he left the service.

He had risen to No. 2 in the Pacific interservice tennis ranks, but there was this big CINCPAC intelligence officer that he had never beaten. The two met in the 1976 finals in Hawaii.

"I beat him twice in one day," Peck boasted. "So then I got to go back to Richmond, Va., to play in the All-Navy championships."

It was during the trip to Virginia, during a stopover in Libby to see his parents, that fate struck another significant blow.

"There was a gentleman in Libby who was selling an insurance agency," Peck recalled, noting that - at the time - he thought that his brother, Tom, who was just finishing up at UM, might be interested.

Gary picked up the financial info and showed it to another former UM baseball player from Libby, Brian Cloutier, who already was in the insurance business. Cloutier told Peck he would be a fool not to buy the agency, and offered to go in on it with him.

"We all moved back to Libby and raised our kids here, and it was a charmed life from then on," Peck said.

When he went to Minnesota, freshmen were not eligible for varsity competition, but he had a solid year playing freshman basketball and baseball.

When he returned for his sophomore year, Minnesota had added future NBA Hall of Famers Archie Clark and Lou Hudson, and Peck could see the writing on the wall in terms of diminished playing time.

Minnesota's freshman coach helped him get in touch with new UM basketball coach Ron Nord and Griz football coach Ray Jenkins, who also had recruited Peck out of high school. They agreed to give him a scholarship, and back to Montana he came.

As fate would have it again, Peck already had met Nord when he was an assistant basketball coach for the University of Wisconsin, the season before Nord came to Montana. Peck and the other starting frosh guard had traveled with a Minnesota assistant to scout Ohio State in its game against the Badgers in Madison, Wis.

That Ohio State team included the likes of Mel Nowell, Jerry Lucas, Larry Siegfried, John Havlicek, and a guy named Bob Knight sitting on the bench.

During his redshirt year, Peck had played golf with members of the UM golf team. After what he described as an exhausting sophomore basketball season he opted to play golf rather than baseball in the spring of 1964.

As fate again would have it, the Grizzlies won the first Big Sky Conference golf championship - one of many for UM - on the Missoula Country Club course in 1964. With Peck as scoring members on that team were Don Waller of Cut Bank, and Gary Koprivica and John Warren from Butte.

Peck shot a final round 74 during the tournament, one of his best scores up to that point.

Peck also played during the first season of Big Sky Conference basketball in 1963-64, but was injured six games into the season.

"Ron was a great guy," Peck said of coach Nord, "and made me feel very comfortable coming back from Minnesota. He had a great personality, was a good motivator and an excellent basketball coach."

One highlight for Peck was helping his team set a single-game scoring mark as well as the record for the highest scoring average per game (83.6), both during the 1965-66 season. Both records still stand, along with the mark for most field goals made in one game, 51 against Idaho State, when the Grizzlies put up that single-game scoring mark of 111 points.

"We were quite a ways ahead (of ISU) and we put in the subs," Peck recalled. "Sitting on our bench was a guy by the name of Dennis Biletnikoff. He hit about nine long shots in about two minutes, and that's how that record got set."

The 1964-65 team set another mark that still stands today - most total rebounds in a season at 1,250.

Peck was a fraternity brother of Tim Aldrich, who led the 1963-64 Grizzlies in scoring. Other standouts during his first year at UM were Jim Pramenko, who played one season for Montana, and forward Keith Law.

When Peck was a junior the Grizzlies had a pair of junior college transfers from South Bend, Ind. - Ed Samelton, who led the team in scoring that year, and Wade Hughes. Unfortunately both flunked out of school at midseason the following year, causing a major shakeup in UM's lineup.

The starting lineup became Peck and John "Doc" Holliday at guards; Milwaukee, Wis., product Norm Clark and Greg Hanson of Missoula at forwards; and John Quist of Cut Bank at center.

There was another memory from that senior season that wasn't quite as pleasant for Peck and his teammates.

Following a disappointing road loss at Gonzaga, coach Nord put the team through a grueling practice right after the bus pulled in from Spokane.

"He didn't think the team was in shape and he did that for a couple of weeks," Peck said, "and we went on a tear and won, I think, 10 or 11 straight ball games."

Holliday's wife, Margaret DonTigny, was a cheer squad teammate of Peck's sister Kathy.

Peck was married soon after he finished school. They were married for 22 years before they divorced in 1989. His ex-wife now lives and works in Hawaii.

"She's a wonderful gal," Peck said. "We still stay in touch."

They have two sons. Kevin, 40 and living in Libby, has two sons, and Jeff, 38, is a vice principal at Dickinson, N.D. High School. Jeff played quarterback at Dickinson State, and married a Dickinson girl. They have one son.

Kevin and Jeff both were all-state basketball players for Libby High School.

Peck calls himself "the ultimate sports junkie," and credits the lack of a television set during part of his growing-up years with creating the malady.

"When you're raised without something and then it becomes available to you later in life, you kind of overdo it," he laughed. "I love all kinds of sports and appreciate the ability of the players today, and the competition."

"That's a difficult question," Peck replied when asked if basketball has changed for the better since he played.

"Obviously the athletes are better - bigger, quicker, faster - (and) they specialize in their sports more, so I think they develop their skills," he added. "I love to see the guy that does all the right things - plays good defense and follows the fundamentals.

"Sometimes I get upset with some of the hot-dogging, but life goes on and times change."

Peck obviously still loves his hometown of Libby, despite the ups and downs the town has faced economically and now, of course, with the health issues related to the vermiculite mine there.

"It's been difficult for a lot of families," Peck said. "It seems to affect some people worse than others. I played on the ball fields where we had some (veremiculite) when I was young and actually played in some of the vermiculite sand piles."

Peck has himself checked annually, and so far he's clean. But he realizes the vermiculite still could be a threat.

"It is a progressive disease, and probably at some point in time it'll get me, too," he said.

Peck said the health situation has brought a lot of the community closer together.

"It's a difficult situation when industry provides jobs, but then on the other hand sometimes industry can bring some bad things to the people," Peck noted.

Peck thinks Libby has survived very well, changing from a logging and mining centered community to one that retirees come to and where recreation has become a major part of the economy.

Obviously the work being done there by the Environmental Protection Agency also has boosted the economy.

Peck said Libby people are tough and resilient, and have been that way for as long as he can remember.

"It's been described a lot of times as a lot of the people that left Butte came to Libby," he laughed. "I think, in the long run, Libby will be a very, very positive place."

Graduation day 1966 at UM was a big day for Peck and stands out as one of his fondest memories. At that time they used to announce all kinds of awards that grads had received, and he had more than his share.

"They kept calling me to come up," he related.

That's because, as a senior, he had been named most valuable player for both the basketball and baseball teams and also won the Grizzly Cup, given to a single two-sport athlete based on athletic and scholastic achievement.

On top of that he was awarded a fellowship to use toward getting a master's degree.

Peck's dream as a young boy had been to earn a scholarship to go to college. Graduation day 1966 was the culmination of fulfilling that dream and catapulted him to a successful career in the Navy and in business.

"It game me a lot of confidence that carried on throughout my military and business career," Peck said. "I felt very secure in my life after that (senior) year."

Peck also gives a huge amount of credit to his parents.

His father, Frank, became a coaching legend in Montana. Nine Libby boys ended up playing Division I baseball after Frank coached them.

Peck had two sisters, Kathy and Connie, the latter married to a crane operator who has worked on major stadium projects in cities like Seattle and Portland, Ore.

Gary's brother, Tom, played point guard for Jud Heathcote at Montana, probably giving the Peck family the distinction of being the only one to generate two point guards for the Grizzlies.

"My mom (Fern) was kind of the force that held everything together," Peck said. "She was just a great lady.

"She kept score at all the ballgames," Peck said. "It was just a wonderful family, and like most families, the girls really keep the family together. They plan all the events and get us back together in the summertime.

"I really have two great sisters."