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WALCH, PETER SANBORN Peter Sanborn Walch died May 3, 2014, in Portland, Maine, the city of his birth. He was 73. Peter spent a blissful childhood with his parents, J. Weston Walch and Ruth D. Walch, and his sister, Carolyn Walch Slayman. Stories abound of snowball fights on the way home to Brighton Avenue from Nathan Clifford School and summer berry-picking expeditions on the family's farm in Richmond Corner, Maine. He attended King Middle School and Deering High School in Portland. He graduated from Swarthmore College and then earned a Ph.D. in art history from Princeton University in 1967. He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study the paintings of Angelica Kaufman in England. Teaching was one of many passions for Peter. He taught Art History at Pomona, Vassar, Yale, and the University of New Mexico. He became the director of the University Art Museum and spent fifteen happy years mounting exhibitions that tapped university and community resources to the fullest. His shows were popular, and he was proud of bringing the public to the museum. His modern design and technology exhibition featured a glorious Harley-Davidson; the usual museum goers were somewhat flummoxed at the sight of a dozen motorcycles parked in front of the museum's door. Among his other passions was food--he was an excellent cook and a connoisseur of wine. Cars were big in his life--the faster and sleeker the better, although his Ford pickup was a favorite for transporting art to the museum and dogs to the mountains. After Peter retired from the university, he and his wife and two dogs moved permanently to Portland and Little Diamond Island, Maine. He served as chairman of the board of what is now known as Walch Education, the family's publishing business, and as unofficial mayor of LIttle Diamond Island, usually meeting the ferry with lemonade, fresh garden kale, and island news. Poker was important. He established the Thursday Night Poker Club which met on the island during the summer and continued on the mainland during the rest of the year. Poker gave Peter a way to channel his mathematical skills, his steel-trap memory, and his affection for risk-taking. The stakes were not high--ten or twenty dollars at most, but the value of the friendships was incalculable. He was a man of keen intelligence, insatiable curiosity, an enormous sense of the joy of life, a democratic nature, and irresistible charm. His wife, Linda Tyler; children, Max Walch and Abigail Laskawy; grandchildren Daniel and Owen Walch and Violet and Gwen Laskawy, step-children Anna Tyler and Elizabeth Stone; sister Carolyn Slayman; nephew Andrew Slayman; niece Rachel Platonov; and the many people in his life who were his friends and colleagues adored him and will miss him. Memorial donations are not encouraged, although he would not have insisted otherwise and would have appreciated that any go either to Friends of Casco Bay in Portland or to New Mexico Animal Friends in Albuquerque. He also would have appreciated that those who knew him remember him by eating good food, drinking good wine, and playing good poker.
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