Peter Hallock, 89

Touisset, Mass.

Peter Hallock of Touisset, Mass., died peacefully on Sept. 25 in the company of his family. Born on April 8, 1931, Pete was a kind and creative person with a passion for adventure and a knack for doing things his own way. The founder and CEO of Gripnail Corporation, which manufactured and marketed innovative metal fasteners and equipment, Pete came from a long line of inventors, including his father, Robert Lay Hallock, who held more than 30 patents. Pete credited his father with “teaching him how to work with his hands.” Pete’s abiding curiosity about the world emerged early. His mother loved to tell the story of how as boy, Pete took a beach umbrella and a rowboat and let the wind propel him 12 miles up Pleasant Bay in Chatham, Mass., “just to see where the wind would take him.”

When he was 19, Pete proposed to the “smartest and most beautiful girl he’d ever seen,” Margaret Beveridge Hunter. The couple wed in 1953, shortly after Pete graduated from Cornell University, welcomed daughter Ann Beveridge Hallock in 1967, and were married for 58 years until Peg’s death in 2011.

An avid sportsman, Pete was especially passionate about one-design sailboat racing, in which he said the difference between winning and second place came down to the skill of the skipper and “the length of a cotter pin.” He won many awards in a range of boats, but his fondest memories were “frostbiting” in his Penguin dinghy in Bristol Harbor and racing his Herreshoff S boat, Lady Luck, with his seasoned crew. A dedicated rower, Pete would do his “nautical jogging” every morning before work, a fishing line trailing over the transom of his ocean-going dory. Pete also earned a pilot’s license at age 16, ran an aerial photography business while in college, and later in life completed an epic, months-long cross-country flying trip with co-pilot Dan Rumplik. It was something he’d always dreamed of doing.

Pete was a 1949 graduate of Choate Academy, where he ran cross-country, wrestled, boxed, pole vaulted – and peeled his share of potatoes as punishment for rules infractions. “It was worth it,” he often said with a grin. Going on to Cornell, he earned a degree in industrial design and helped found the school’s sailing program. After graduation, and serving in the Air Force in Pensacola, Fla., Pete earned his MBA at Cornell. He began his career as account executive during the “Mad Men” era of advertising, first at McCann Erickson in Manhattan and later with Noyes & Company in Providence. In 1965, he started his own company, Gripnail Corporation, in East Providence.

Late in life, Pete was lucky to meet Margaret “Peggy” Welsh of Swansea, Mass., and they married in 2014. Together they savored many happy hours and greatly enjoyed one another’s company in Touisset, Chatham, and Spruce Creek, Fla. In his final years and especially the last months, the loving care of Peggy, as well as her sisters Ellie Ware and Rita Cotter, made it possible for Pete to enjoy life and remain in his home, comforted by the view of Narragansett Bay.

Pete is survived by his wife Peggy, his daughter, Ann, and several grandchildren. He will be greatly missed by his many friends and sailing buddies, who wish him fair winds and full sails.