Peter Goldthwait Bennett died with a peaceful heart amid the love of his family on March 17, 2010 at his Langley home. He was 84.

The impulse to the road less taken and concerns for peace were family threads woven into Peter’s life, as were his early experiences in the outdoors. Born on Jan. 13, 1926 in New Haven, Conn., he was the first child of Roger Williams Bennett and Margaret Rand Goldthwait.

With World War II looming, his father, a pacifist Episcopal minister, enrolled Peter in Westtown School, a Quaker boarding school near Philadelphia, Pa. After graduating from Westtown, Peter attended Haverford College until being drafted into alternative service in 1944 as a conscientious objector.

He was sent to Douglas County, Ore. where the pacifist crew built roads and cleared a burned-over area. The beauty, wild country and simple life were terrifically attractive to Peter, and he loved working with his hands. But his East Coast origins and family expectations drew him away.

After additional alternative service at an understaffed, outdated mental hospital in Virginia, he returned to school and received a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania. During this time, he lived in the Brudercoop, a cooperative housing community based on the Bruderhof model.

Another resident of the co-op, Zula Wallin, caught Peter’s eye; they were married in 1950 at Pendle Hill, Pa., and had two sons, Dane and Roger.

Peter became a psychiatrist, studying analysis for many years, with a practice in Bryn Mawr, Pa. He returned to Haverford College from 1959–71 as the college’s first school psychiatrist.

He met his second wife, Leena Walve, a Finnish citizen, and they were married in 1963 in Finland by the mayor of Helsinki. Leena had two children, Jaana and Jarkko, from a previous marriage whom Peter adopted and together the couple had a daughter, Tarja.

By the late 1970s Peter found that the expected path had not brought success and happiness. After a move to Amherst, Mass. and subsequent separation from his wife, he took a trip that changed his life. He came to Whidbey Island in 1982 to visit Gretchen d’Armand, who he had met in Amherst, and who became his third wife in May 1991.

It was on Whidbey that Peter made the shift toward spirituality and immersed himself in the joys of the natural world, both of which had been calling him since childhood. He participated in the programs at Chinook community and at Pendle Hill spiritual center in Pennsylvania. He joined Talking Circle, a co-housing community in Langley, and found local connection for his life-long commitment to peace and environmental activism. His generous, joyful nature drew people to him; Peter was a role model and mentor to many.

Peter became a war-tax resister and active in the White Train protests against nuclear weapons arriving to arm submarines at the Trident base in Bangor, where he was arrested for his non-violent opposition. He was a founder of the Whidbey Island Quakers and a member of Port Townsend Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends.

Responding to his lifelong affinity with nature, Peter began sea kayaking and facilitated many trips with friends to beautiful and remote locations in the Pacific Northwest’s Salish Sea and along the British Columbia coastline. An avid bicyclist, Peter was well-known by local residents who saw him pedaling South Whidbey’s roads through the years.

Peter is survived by his wife, Gretchen d’Armand; sister, Anne Vernon and husband Jack, of Brookline, Mass.; three sons, Dane, Roger and wife Emma, all of Langley, and Jarkko, of Mannyunk, Pa.; daughters, Jaana Bennett and husband E. James Sampson, of Wellington, Colo., and Tarja Bennett-Williams and husband Paul Williams, of Lincoln, Neb.; two stepdaughters, Jeannette d’Armand, of Seattle, and Cynthia Sullivan, of Annandale, Va.; and his beloved youngest generation: grandchildren Andy Bennett, John Eric Grubesic Jr., Peter Grubesic and Harlan Williams; step-grandchildren Shannon and Colin Sullivan; and goddaughter Carla Patterson.

A memorial service will be held in celebration of Peter’s life at 6 p.m. Friday, March 26 at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation’s church, 20103 Highway 525, Freeland. A potluck follows.

Memorials in Peter’s memory may be made to the American Friends Service Committee, Friends of Friends or Home Health Care & Hospice of Whidbey General Hospital.