FLORIDA – Peter Joseph Wiley, 59, of Portland, passed away unexpectedly on March 6, while visiting family in Florida.

The son of Harold and Grace (Tierney) Wiley, he was born on Jan. 10, 1947. He grew up in Norway, attended Norway elementary schools and graduated from Oxford Hills High School in 1965 and Georgetown University in 1969.

He and Elizabeth “Betsy” Otterson met in high school and began dating in college. They married when they were both 21.

“We grew up together in a way that complemented each other,” Betsy recalls. “Every evening, we would tell each other what had happened that day, and it was as if it hadn’t happened until we spoke.”

He enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served for four years in Rota, Spain. After discharge, he returned to Maine to run the family business, Wiley Pontiac, with his father until they sold it in 1993.

During the 1980s, he was a member of the Maine Board of Environmental Protection (BEP), and in 1986, he was the board’s chair.

Sam Zaitlin served with him on the BEP when the proposed dam at Big Ambejackmockamus Falls on the West Branch of the Penobscot River came before the board.

“The Big A’ was complicated environmentally and legally,” Zaitlin recalls. “Peter was always able to synthesize and concisely focus the board on the two or three issues we most needed to consider, so we could reach rational, intelligent and fair decisions.”

His time on the BEP kindled his keen interest in environmental law, and he enrolled in the University of Maine School of Law, receiving his law degree in 1989.

“There was a single mother attending classes with Peter,” Betsy recalls. “When she couldn’t get a sitter, she would bring her three little girls to class, and they would play quietly on the floor while their mother took notes. He saw how hard it was for his classmate and he remembered his grandmother raising six sons alone while working in a shoe mill and running a boarding house, so we established a special scholarship fund for single parents attending the Law School.”

Politics was always a passion. In high school, he was elected president of the State Council of Student Governments and later the Muskie Club. While he was still a student at Georgetown, he worked on Sen. Edmund S. Muskie’s staff from 1966 to 1969.

“Peter was a born politician,” Betsy remembers. “His daughter and granddaughter inherited his knack for working a room.”

In 1986, he volunteered on former Maine Attorney General James Tierney’s gubernatorial campaign. In 1994, after helping to organize former Portland Mayor Tom Allen’s primary campaign for governor, he joined Angus King’s fall campaign. Governor-elect King appointed him to his transition team and in 1995, named him director of Special Projects in his first Administration.

“Peter was the guy I went to when I didn’t know where else to turn,” Gov. King remembers. “He was Mr. Fix-it.”

He led the effort to broker an agreement for state support of Bath Iron Works’ construction of a new land-level facility. In 1999, Gov. King asked him to be his Chief Operating Officer.

Later that year, he joined Curtis, Thaxter, Stevens, Broder and Micoleau LLC as a partner. In 2000, the National Governors Association offered him the position of Director of the Office of Management and Consulting, enabling Betsy to resume graduate school at George Washington University. For the next five years, her traveled the country as NGA’s liaison to new governors as they made their transition from candidate to officeholder.

In the spring of 2005, as Betsy’s doctoral studies were nearing an end, he accepted the job as U.S. Rep. Tom Allen’s chief of staff.

“Peter had only been on the job a few weeks when the Defense Department announced plans to cut thousand of jobs in Maine,” Congressman Allen said. “Peter’s experience in the King Administration during the previous base closure round proved invaluable as we succeeded in saving the jobs at the Kittery shipyard, adding jobs in Limestone and organizing a top-notch redevelopment effort in the Brunswick area.”

Friend Susan Stiker remembers his culinary expertise.

“He took lessons from Rebecca Reilly, the founder of the original Madd Apple Caf,” she said. “He took such delight in both the cooking and the presentation. Eventually, a group of us formed what we mockingly called The Grub Club. We got together four or five times a year. When it was Betsy’s turn to cook we all knew that Peter was the chef.”

His other great passion was golf. His father was a professional golfer and still plays daily at age 83.

“When Peter was just a little boy, he would sit on the Norway country club porch,” Betsy said. “One time, a golfer was stuck in a sand trap, chopping away at his ball. Peter called out to him, Hey, mister, you need to take lessons from my father!'”

Daughter Martha vividly remembers the many trips, from Boston to Ireland and beyond, that she took as a child with her parents. Although she and her mother always came first for him, this was not literally true on these expeditions.

“He was such a fast walker that he usually left us in the dust,” she recalled fondly.

“Peter loved Christmas, especially the stockings,” Betsy said. “He would cram them with trinkets he picked up as he traveled. It would take us an hour to open them all on Christmas morning.”

His greatest joy was his 6-year-old granddaughter, Grace, his daughter, Martha said. But he also found great satisfaction in his work and play-politics and golf.

“He always came home happy,” Martha remembers.

“Peter was a mensch,” his old friend Sam Zaitlin asserts. “He was always level-headed, compassionate and thoughtful. In an age when so many people are obsessed with material possessions, his love for and devotion to his family was paramount, the central focus of his life. They don’t make many like Peter anymore.”

He is survived by his father, Harold, and stepmother, Elaine; his wife of 37 years, Betsy; their daughter, Martha Wiley; and their granddaughter, Grace Wiley; in addition to aunts, uncles and many cousins.

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