By Tony Farkas
tony@polkcountypublishing.com
He was called a friend, a brother, and even a mentor, but one of the highest compliments Greg Peak ever received was that he was a newspaper man, through and through.
Peak, who was a longtime associate of Alvin Holley, owner of Polk County Publishing Company Inc., died Saturday from complications of diabetes.
Final arrangements are pending.
Holley said Peak was a valuable employee for the company.
“He was very dependable and became a very close friend,” he said. “It is a tragic loss for our company.”
A native of Colorado, Peak grew up in Colorado, Arizona and Texas. He moved to the East Texas community of Leggett the summer before his freshman year in high school, when his parents accepted jobs there as teachers.
It was during his years at Leggett High School that Peak became interested in journalism. During his junior year he served as the editor of the school’s annual, and the yearbook advisor convinced him to “try out” for a job with the local semi-weekly Polk County Enterprise in nearby Livingston.
Peak began work as a stringer being paid 10 cents a column-inch for his copy. He was assigned to cover Leggett High School, including the school board meetings, sports activities and any and all club or class events that might be remotely newsworthy.
The summer after his junior year, then-editor Dale Modisette brought him into the newspaper office, initially to handle obits and rewrites. However, three weeks into that job, major rainstorms all along the Trinity River watershed caused problems at the relatively new Lake Livingston Dam. The Trinity River Authority had to rapidly open the gates on the dam which in turn caused massive flooding downstream.
At that point, Peak was drafted as a reporter and sent out to help cover the flood, sowing the seeds of a career.
After graduating from high school in 1974, Peak attended Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches while also working as the editor of the weekly Trinity Standard, which like the Polk County Enterprise, is part of Alvin Holley’s Polk County Publishing Company.
In 1976, Peak was again recruited by Modisette, who had returned to his native West Texas and was working as the state editor for the San Angelo Standard-Times. Peak joined the staff of the daily paper’s morning edition as a general assignments reporter and later was named as the education writer covering Angelo State University and the San Angelo Independent School District.
When his father’s health began to fail, Peak returned to East Texas in 1979 and rejoined the Polk County Publishing Company family as area news editor, working with several of the weekly publications in the group. Over the years he served as editor for the Trinity Standard, Tyler County Booster, San Jacinto News-Times, Corrigan Times and Polk County Enterprise.
Peak was the only two-term president to have served the Texas Gulf Coast Press Association until Murray and Mary Judson became co-presidents in 2013. He held the office in 1987-88 when he presided over the association’s 50th Anniversary convention and then again in 2002-2003.
During his first term as TGCPA president, the 50th Anniversary convention was held at the historic Galvez Hotel in Galveston, the site of the group’s first convention.
In 2019, health challenges prompted his move to Houston to be closer to family members, and later he was placed in hospice care in Missouri City.
Tyler County Booster Editor Chris Edwards said he was very saddened to have heard of Peak’s passing.
“Greg was a quiet force of nature and really believed in the power of the fourth estate,” he said.
For those who would like to honor his lifetime of community service, please consider a gift to R.E.A.D. Polk County, a local literary project that partners with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.
