Every day, 100-year-old Bill Peterson drives himself from his Loudon home to the Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish in Concord.
He enters the small chapel, praying to Mother Mary for his parish, the people he meets and his fellow veterans, particularly those who also served in World War II.
“I ran into a guy in a supermarket the other day, and he’s giving me all this kind of admiration because I was in World War II. I said, ‘I’m not looking for that. I wear the hat so people know that World War II vets are around. We’re still here,'” he said.
Of the more than 16 million Americans who served in the Second World War, fewer than 46,000 were alive as of 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA established the Centenarian Recognition Program in 2020 to honor veterans who have turned 100 with a letter from the VA Secretary, a commemorative coin and public recognition from the local VA.
Following his church’s Sunday Mass, Peterson received these honors. Kevin Forrest, director of the Manchester VA Medical Center, presented the letter and coin, as well as his own commemorative coin.
“Our nation honors your service in the United States Navy during World War II. You are part of this nation’s greatest generation for your legacy of patriotism and honor,” the letter read. “Americans enjoy the blessings of peace and liberty because of patriots like you who answered the call to defend our nation.”
The recognition moved Peterson.
“No matter how long I live, I will pray for you all. I love you all,” he said. “It’s something I don’t deserve, but I thank you.”
A member of the parish since 2002, Peterson has been a staple of the community.
Peterson joined the U.S. Navy in 1943 at 17 years old. He was sent to Majuro, then Roi-Namur in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Theater.
“They had us wear the green that the Marines wear. But the seal on it said ‘U.S. Navy’ instead of ‘Marine’. They handed me a rifle, 17 years old. Never shot a gun in my life before,” he said.
Originally trained as a radioman, he ended up serving in combat support as the Marines worked to clear the Marshall Islands of enemy combatants. Later in the war, he went back to his original training, servicing aircraft that had returned from deeper in the war zone. Damaged planes would come back from the front for repair, or to be shipped back to Pearl Harbor.
He had been brought back to the United States to be trained as an aerial gunner when the war ended.
“So I said, ‘What’s the sense of me being trained for this and going to carry a war that is over?'” he recalled. “So I said, ‘I want to transfer.'”
He ended up in Hutchison, Kansas, servicing planes used by trainees. A few months before he left, he returned home for a visit, where he met his future wife, Margaret “Peggy” Igoe.
“It was a blind date,” he said. Peterson was visiting family in Massachusetts, and his aunt knew a family with a girl around his age. “It had to be inspired by God, or our blessed mother, because she was such a wonderful person, and I had known lots of girls, but they were all married and gone, and all of a sudden this girl comes into my life. Nobody else made any difference once I found her.”
The two would go on to have nine children, and they currently have 27 grandkids, 54 great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren.
“I mean, you know what love has a mother got. There’s no better love than a mother’s love,” he said. “And I picked the right woman.”
Peterson worked as a tradesman after leaving the military, starting at his uncle’s company servicing elevators. After that, he shifted to general maintenance work with hotels, eventually running the maintenance department for a few different hotel chains.
The couple had summered in New Hampshire and “had so much fun,” so moving to be close to their daughter, who lived in Loudon, made the most sense.
“We decided if we’re going to sell, we’re coming up here, so up we came. We came here in 2001, and we’ve been in New Hampshire since. And I wouldn’t go anywhere else,” he said.
Peterson remains at their house, where his wife died in 2022 after 75 years of marriage.
He prizes his independence: He lives alone and drives himself to church.
“Somebody said to me one day, ‘Why don’t you use the ramp? Why do you use the steps?’ I said, ‘You know why? Because I’m making myself use the steps. Because I just gotta make myself do it, and this way I can keep going,'” he recalled. “You have to make yourself do it.”
Another frequent stop for Peterson is the local Wendy’s, where 85 people attended his surprise 100th birthday party. For an entire month, a sign read “Happy 100th Birthday, Bill.”
Since then, “they won’t let me pay,” he said. “I put the money down, they push it back.”
To make up for it, whenever he goes, he takes the money he would have spent on a meal, adds $5 and gives it to unhoused people he sees on street corners downtown.
“I think I’ve been blessed an awful lot by the people in my parish, people I run into in the town, people I’ve run into in Wendy’s and Wendy’s themselves. I’ve had so many good people,” Peterson said.
