Peter Thomas
Peter Thomas was born in Pensacola, Florida to Dr. John D. Thomas and Sibyl
Addenbrooke.
His Welsh father, a Presbyterian minister, and his English mother, a schoolteacher
from Salisbury, stressed the importance of reading, education and memorization to
their son. Thomas says that his father always stressed mental images as an important
speaking tool. For example, he told his son if he were talking about horses he had to
picture horses in his mind.
Thomas began his career at fourteen as an announcer on a local radio show. Since the
station could not pay him, due to his age, they arranged for the sponsor, Piper Aircraft,
to give him flying lessons in a Piper Cub. Within just a few years, Thomas would be
hosting Big Band remote broadcasting locations.
With the onset of World War II, he left The Stony Brook School and volunteered into
the United States Army in 1943, after being offered an Armed Forces Radio deferment,
and served with the First Infantry Division in five major campaigns, including the
Battle of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. He was issued a Battle star for each
of the five campaigns. He was also awarded the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, the Unit
French Croix de guerre, and Belgian Fourragère.
Thomas has received many awards for his work but cites, as one of his best, the Oscar
won by a documentary he narrated, One Survivor Remembers. The film, produced by
HBO, chronicles the personal experience of Gerda Weissman Klein, who was interred
at the Nordhausen Concentration Camp when she was a teenager. Thomas' unit
participated in the haunting liberation of Nordhausen. Klein and Thomas met during
the post-production of the documentary, and again at its premiere. Thomas also
participated in an HBO film on the Battle of Hürtgen Forest, in which he fought with
the 1st Infantry Division (United States). Thomas was also the narrator for a miniseries
that ran on The Discovery Channel in 1993 entitled How the West was Lost.
Thomas is married to Stella Thomas, formerly Stella Ford Barrineau, and lives in
Naples, Florida. He is involved in work with veterans, having served on the board of
the National D-Day Memorial Foundation and in other similar roles.
