Howard Peck, March's Featured Artist, was born in 1922 in San Diego, California. He took art classes in public school. In addition his father paid for private one on one art classes from a lady who charged $.50 per lesson-this was during the Great Depression. After high school he worked for solar air craft in San Diego. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps in WWII rather than wait to be drafted. He was trained in Florida where he became a tail gunner on a B24. He was stationed in England where he made one and a half flights to targets in Germany and France. He was shot down over France in December, 1943. The Germans captured him and sent him to Stalag 17. The Red Cross gave the prisoners books, watercolor art supplies and candy. He painted portraits of the other prisoners which he gave to them. He did a self portrait of which he made a photograph to preserve it. It is now

in a notebook he has put together.

Howard served as a prisoner of war for sixteen months until the war ended. He was liberated in the spring of 1945. The Germans marched the prisoners to another area as the Russians were close. Then the prisoners flew to the coast of France, where he caught a merchant marine boat to New York.From New York, he went back to San Diego. Fom San Diego, he went to Coos Bay because there was work there in the lumber industry. He met and married his first wife, Anna Mae, and their son Terry was born there. He was a charter member of the Coos Art League, which is still active with a