Paul Steven Peck, age 72, passed away peacefully on January 20th, 2024 in Richardson, Texas. He was born on November 14th, 1951 in Fort Worth, Texas to Marion Wesley & Karla Ratliff Peck. Paul was raised in Fort Worth and graduated from Arlington Heights High School in 1970 and Texas Tech University in 1974. Paul married Betty Drew Peck in 1977 and the couple had two daughters, Elizabeth (Lisa) Peck Baird and Diana Peck Borys.
Following undergrad, Paul went on to earn his MBA from Texas Tech (1977) and Certified Public Accounting license from the State of Texas (1987). He worked in the tech sector his entire career, starting with Texas Instruments in Lubbock, Texas in 1974 (where he met Betty) and making his way across 20 different tech companies and start-ups over his 40-year career, including Xerox, TBS, DSC, Monterey Networks and Cisco Systems. Upon retiring from industry, Paul turned his passion for technology, business, and people into an adjunct professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Paul’s passion for technology, business, and people spanned both his personal and professional life. In technology, his interests covered everything from tracing the history of telecom (see: Telecom Corridor Genealogy Project), to collecting well-designed and meticulously engineered cars (preferably BMWs), to becoming a licenced ham radio operator (because why not?). There was no inch of technological innovation, however old or new, that didn’t spark his interest and get his motor running (pun delightfully intended). His passion for tech spilled over into a deep pride in Richardson, Texas, home of the Telecom Corridor and city that nurtured both his and Betty’s careers, together earning the Richardson Arts Alliance ‘Patron of the Arts’ award in 2018.
In business, Paul was encyclopaedic. He took a deep interest in the core of any enterprise or business model, aiming to understand how the thing really worked. It probably all started back at the Texas Instruments plant in Lubbock where he was process engineer for the factory floor, designing machine sequences and layouts that could churn out the maximum number of calculators per hour. He was intensely aware of operational details, which flowed through to his grasp of accounting and data, which he occasionally shared with his daughters during desperate phone calls during their college years, typically the night before a major economics or finance exam.
Equal to his passion for tech and business was his passion for people. Paul was the definition of an extrovert and a master networker. His energy was derived from time spent with other human beings. He viewed every stranger as a friend he had simply not met yet and saw every encounter as a learning opportunity. If you had a background or experience unique to his own, he’d glean as much information from you as possible, allowing him to learn about the world while at the same time listening and forging life-long friendships. His passion for learning, sharing, and connecting people’s stories made him a mentor to and champion of many, which in turn made him the life of any party.
And that is how his family and his friends will remember him—as the life of the party. And with the help of his wife Betty, parties of all sizes were Paul’s calling card. From the annual Kentucky Derby party at their home complete with parimutuel betting window, to ‘Margarita Smackdown’ parties challenging friends to outdo his own father Wes Peck’s classic 3-2-1 recipe—Paul looked for any excuse to bring people together and revelled in their company. That energy and lust for life will be deeply missed.
Paul is preceded in death by his brother, Bryan David Peck, and his parents, Wes & Karla Peck. He is survived by his wife of 46 years, Betty, their daughter Lisa and her husband Jeremy Baird and their children Caroline and Wesley, and their daughter Diana and her husband Jakub Borys and their (soon-to-arrive) daughter Betty Jo.
Paul’s Celebration of Life will be held in Richardson, Texas July 2024, followed by a last lap around the Nürburgring in November 2024, and a spreading of his ashes in Cape Canaveral, Florida in early 2025. More details to follow.
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