Death Calls Peter Memory, Irish Artist

Peter Memory, 49, Lewiston artist, sailor, war veteran and world traveler, was found dead at his home at 357 Delsol lane at 9:30 a.m. yesterday, Coroner Andrew Vassar reported. Mr. Memory, or P. Dion M'Mory, which he said was his real Irish family name and which he used to sign his paintings, had lived here the last 15 years. Death was attributed to a heart attack.

Death occurred between 8 and 9:30 a.m., Vassar said. Memory customarily placed a pot containing coffee on an electric plate at 8 a.m., then returned to his bed. The pot had boiled dry when Ralph Huttle, a neighbor, discovered the body and notified Sheriff W. W. Hays. Hays entered the residence by removing a screen.

Mr. Memory lived at his home alone. He was well known here for his oil and water color paintings, and as a maker of flies for fishermen. He also engaged in short story writing and sculptoring.

He was born in Texas Nov. 3, 1898. At the age of 12, after his father died, he returned to Ireland with his mother. He went to sea when he was 14 years old and, at the outbreak of World war I, enlisted in Canada, serving with the British through the battle of Jutland and other sea encounters.

After the war he worked in automobile factories in the east; came west to Idaho in 1923. He worked as a forest service employe (sic), farmer, sheepman, construction worker before a back injury sustained while working in Lewiston in 1939 forced him to retire. He began painting seriously then.