I Never Really Left Belvedere: Paige Peterson’s Story

Paige Peterson
Connie, Paige and Laurie on our Belvedere Lagoon dock. 1955

I am two weeks old in the photograph. My mother is holding me on the dock of my grandfather’s house on the Belvedere Lagoon. The Tiburon hills behind us are bare, with just a few oak trees growing in the ravines. There are no houses on those golden hills. In 1955, Belvedere-Tiburon was still a railroad town. Still wild and unfretted.

Paige Peterson
Photos from Paige’s book “Growing Up Belvedere-Tiburon.” 2020

I have spent 65 years coming and going from that dock. It is the foundation of my Belvedere life: an ideal childhood outside. Swimming in the brackish water. Sailing on the Flying Fish. Playing “king of the raft.” And daydreaming.

Paige Peterson
Sister Laurie, Cousins Teresa and Phillip, with Paige. 1959

At Redwood High School I was a musical theater kid, always in the chorus. I spent summers performing in shows at Dominican College, again in the chorus. I was skinny, flat chested and plain, not particularly ambitious or talented — an observer. And yet I believed something wonderful would happen to me one day. It would come to me, I wouldn’t have to push.

It happened. In my twenties, I worked with Vivian Vance, who was Ethel in “I Love Lucy.” Over the years we went on the road several times.

Paige Peterson
John Dodds, Vivian Vance and Paige. 1977

Then Viv was diagnosed with a second bout of breast cancer and we stayed home. She died in 1979 in her bedroom in the Farr Cottage next to The San Francisco Yacht Club.

John Dodds, her devoted husband, wanted to start over, and he returned to the gay life that ended when he married Viv twenty-five years earlier. His first boyfriend in Belvedere was Barry Clinton, a young artist from San Francisco. Barry had never painted a woman. In 1980, I spent most of the year in a fourth-floor walkup apartment in San Francisco sitting for him; that led to “Moods of a Woman,” a one man/one woman show at Gump’s.

In 1981, Barry died of AIDS. Years later, Tom Hoving, director of the Metropolitan Museum, saw several of Barry’s paintings in my apartment and said if he had lived he would have been the John Singer Sargent of his generation.

Paige Peterson
One of Barry Clinton’s paintings of Paige. 1980

In the early 1980s, John Dodds and I moved to a loft in New York City. I was represented by the William Morris Agency and was a working actress. John had his own publishing imprint. Our lives were filled with intellectuals, writers, musicians and artists. Black tie events. Dinners at Elaine’s. Weekends in Sag Harbor. It was the stuff of novels.

I met my husband through John. When we told him we were getting married, he said it was one of his proudest moments. 

Paige Peterson
David and Paige with Connie and Andre Boissier at St. Stephen’s Church in Belvedere. 1985

My husband was gentle, kind and supportive. We had two perfect babies. A beautiful life. Then it was different.

I spent my 40s battling Cowden Syndrome. It was a miserable time: a burst ovary, a brain tumor, cancer, and copious other tumors requiring multiple surgeries at multiple New York hospitals. Through it all I worked with Christopher Cerf. We wrote and I illustrated a children’s book, “Blackie: The Horse Who Stood Still.” 

Paige Peterson

Paige and Christopher Cerf
Paige and Christopher Cerf on Blackie. 2006
Peter Cary, Paige and Alexandra
Peter Cary, Paige and Alexandra. 2007

My children grew into remarkable adults. In 2009, my daughter and I spent time at Pritikin, a health center in Florida. There I met the industrialist Jon M. Huntsman. Our shared medical lives bonded us. Jon mentored me, and I spent a decade traveling in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as Executive Vice President of his Huntsman Cancer Foundation. I am so grateful for the adventure that Jon brought to my life. 

Barry Clinton had always urged me to get on the other side of the canvas. In New York, I did that; my son’s empty bedroom became a painting studio. And now I also paint in my outdoor garden studio in Belvedere.

Paige Peterson
Paige in her outdoor studio. 2015

In this year of Covid I wrote Growing Up Belvedere-Tiburon. And I spent weeks going over historical photographs archived at the Belvedere-Tiburon Landmarks Society.

It is said that you can’t go home again. When you’re from Belvedere, you never really leave.

 

Growing Up Belvedere-Tiburon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Get a copy of “Growing Up Belvedere-Tiburon” at your local Book Passage or online here.


Paige Peterson

As a journalist, Paige has reported extensively about the Middle East and contributed to Marin Magazine, New York Social Diary and the National Council on U.S. Arab Relations. She is the author of “Growing Up Belvedere-Tiburon.” With Christoper Cerf, she is the co-author and illustrator of Blackie: The Horse Who Stood Still,” and the illustrator of A Christmas Carol,” adapted by Jesse Kornbluth. As a painter, she is represented by Gerald Peters Gallery in New York and has been honored by The Guild Hall Academy of the Arts in East Hampton. She is Author and Artist in Residence at Literacy Partners and a board member of Catmosphere, National Council on U.S. Arab Relations, and Safari West Wildlife Foundation. Raised in Belvedere, Ms. Peterson has two adult children and lives in New York City.PaigeMPeterson.com
Photo by Jessica J. Miller. 2020