In the Spotlight

30 January 2017

“In the Spotlight”. . . Meet Marc Peterson
-submitted by Jan Crane


I am 60 years old, my wife’s name is Vickie and we live in Cottonwood Heights. We have a 30-year-old son who also lives in Cottonwood Heights, but not with us. I grew up on a small dairy farm in Smithfield, UT.


In July of this year, after 30 years of service, I retired from General Electric. I primarily worked in electrical energy generation areas, mostly in sales. The last 16 years my team and I were involved in large wind energy projects in the western half of the US and Mexico. Working for GE, we lived on the east and west coasts and then finally found our way back to Utah. I traveled often in my work with GE, and weekends were spent doing the things I couldn’t get done during the week. . . and in the winter, skiing, of course. Now that I’m retired, and living in Utah, I can finally correct earlier career decisions and be that ski bum I always should have been.


We enjoy watching and attending college sports, reading (I’ve read the last few Open Minds Book Group discussion books without knowing they had selected those books.) And, we also enjoy attending musical and theater events.


Our first interaction with the First Unitarian Church of Salt Lake was at a household items swap event a couple of years ago where we brought a few items to donate. I picked up a pamphlet and saw a photo of John Adams on the wall, as being one of the early American members of the Unitarian Church. I had recently read his biography and that peaked my interest.


My naïve view of religion was that all churches were primarily interested in their specific doctrine and following those rules were more important than being a good person and doing good things. Once I started to research the Unitarians, I was very surprised to find how closely my beliefs and interests matched those of the church. It is very rewarding to find, after only 60 years, a group of like-minded people! We started to attend services this summer after I retired.


My participation in the church has so far has been a donated a couch to the refugee effort and participation in the roadside clean up event this fall. It is important to me to feel officially connected to First Church and all of the things it supports. I do pledge, for the same reasons.