Exeter Legends You Need to Know: Peter Greer ‘58

By KAI GOWDA, NAOMI MOSKOVICH, and AMANI SHETTY

Peter Greer grew up in Nashua, NH, and attended Exeter for three years in Dunbar Hall. A member of numerous clubs and the captain of the golf team, he was heavily involved in the Exeter community. In 1958, Greer graduated and went on to pursue a Bachelor of Arts at Yale University. 

Greer went on to study abroad in Spain, Morocco, and France before joining the Peace Corps in Columbia for two years. However, in 1968, Greer decided to return to his alma mater, joining the English Department. Throughout his time at Exeter as a faculty member, Greer was a part of numerous dorms, class trips abroad, and sports teams. 

“If you are going to choose a colleague to work with you on a committee, in a dormitory, or on the athletic fields, and you want the work done well, with thought, good judgment, warmth, reliability, compassion, dedication, support, sustained enthusiasm, and fun, you choose Peter Greer,” Academy librarian Jacquelyn Thomas said.

Greer maintained great relationships with his fellow teachers and valued mentoring new teachers. Eimer Page, Dean of Faculty and former Instructor in English, said, “Peter had patience and enormous respect for new students and new teachers, and was always willing to share his experience without making me feel like mine was irrelevant.” Greer was a helpful resource for new teachers to reach out to. 

“I remember that he took what could have been a stressful process for me and made it into a truly collegial and collaborative give and take,” Instructor in English Kelly Flynn said. “He was very open about sharing his own struggles in the classroom and he had a way of making suggestions that helped me regroup and reorient myself without fear.”

Greer made sure that new faculty felt welcomed and adapted quickly to the new environment. Instructor in Physics Tatiana Waterman discussed her experience when she was a new teacher here at Phillips Exeter. “An indelible memory is the time we, new teachers at PEA, spent meeting in his classroom once a week. A tranquil space, where we could share our troubles, and leave wiser and happier at the end of each of those formats. The best 30 formats of my first year.” 

Flynn said, “He was not just a teacher of students, but a teacher of teachers.”

“Mr. Greer was the chair of the English Department when I was hired in 1995,” Instructor in English Ellen Wolff said. “With colleagues and with students alike, he was an exceptionally warm, generous, and attentive presence, eager to make people feel at home and to support them in doing their best work.”

Greer was very well known for a course that he taught and created as an instructor in English at Exeter titled, “Literature and the Land,” and it is now one of the longest-running secondary school environmental humanities courses in the country. The course continues to honor his legacy by following his class activities by taking weekly “walks” into the woods and exploring Donald Culross Peattie’s “slow turn of the seasons.” Greer ultimately wanted to foster his students and make a connection from them with space and nature, and this is what the course fulfills. He was a major building block to the foundation of Exeter English. 

“He designed and initiated ‘Literature and the Land,’ a course that allowed him to join his interests in the environment and literature, and to immerse his students in the natural world. It’s a testament to his vision that the course remains in the Courses of Instruction long after his passing,” Wolff said.

  “Greer was an exacting and even a demanding teacher who had a sense of rigor in his teaching that came through in his insistence on logic in analysis, rhetorical skill, the ins and outs of syntax, and all the rules of grammar, but above all, he wanted to help students find their own voice and make it sing,” Flynn echoed. 

“Peter explained the idea of a ‘spiral of increasing complexity’ in the skills the English writing curriculum at Exeter imparts, where we return to assignments and texts with greater expectations of student ability to handle perspective, or timeframe, or other writing elements,” Page said. 

As stated on numerous occasions, Peter Greer was an outstanding man, mentor, and friend. He retired in 2007, after teaching for nearly 39 years. On Dec. 8, 2013, at the age of 73, he passed away after suffering from a longstanding battle with cancer.

After hearing of his passing, Waterman stated that she and other faculty were filled with “immense sadness. We wished he had a longer life.” 

“I still miss him very much,” Flynn said. 

Greer will never be forgotten. He left behind an outstanding impact and students and teachers throughout the Exeter community, as a passionate teacher with a strong work ethic.

“He saw teaching as a truly great profession and brought his best self to it throughout his career,” Page said. “I was fortunate indeed to have known him.” Greer shaped the way English classrooms run today. 

Instructor in English Todd Hearon said, “When alumni think of ‘Harkness,’ they think [of] Greer.” Greer was able to influence students by becoming observers and listeners. He tried to bring out the best in every person he knew. 

For Waterman, the most important part of Greer’s legacy was “the love he instilled in his students about nature, so they’d become better writers by observing nature.”

“He spent countless hours working one-on-one with students and with teachers,” Page said. “Perhaps his greatest legacy is the number of people he taught in one way or another who model their work on his respectful, thoughtful, engaged way of drawing out the voice of the person in front of him.”