Veteran Portraits
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"They had mothers, sons, wives and daughters, and they went off and left them behind to protect our country, and I think that this is extremely honorable," Malenda Trick said in a prepared statement.
About Peter Thomas
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.
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