Gil served on the Northeastern News for four years, including a stint as editor-in-chief, while his then-and-still wife, Margie, held the managing editor’s post. He has been writing ever since.
While at NU, he worked co-op and part-time in the Boston Globe sports department and then on a weekly business paper called the 128 World, headquartered in the basement of the owner’s vintage Norwood home. Upon graduation from Division B in 1969, he was hired as full-time associate editor by that paper (the boss insisted on keeping the editor’s title). Plus, he continued to work twice a week as a “night hawk” in the Globe sports department, until he was hired by United Press International in Boston in late 1970.
Gil toiled there seven years, seven months, and seven days, rising to New England sports editor the final five years. In mid-1978, he was liberated from that vise-like job (he always bitched that working for UPI was like walking around with crackers in your underwear) when Margie became a TV writer in Hollywood (see her bio elsewhere in this issue).
Gil freelanced a bit while in La La Land, and even taught journalism for two years at a community college but says, “I mostly drank and smoked pot.” After sobering up in 1978, he eventually turned the major negative in his life into a positive by going back to school to become a drug and alcohol counselor. Once Margie and he returned to Massachusetts in 1993, he hooked on as a counselor with a hospital detox program, later earned a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling and operated a private therapy practice until his retirement in 2012. He currently is writing a weekly blog on WordPress.com.
Now married 53 years, Margie and Gil are rocking Southwest Florida. He describes his life as “way beyond good.”
(Gil Peters is a 1969 graduate of Northeastern University with a degree in Liberal Arts.)