Peter Richard Moody sat the two department chairs in his office.

They had frequently bickered and Moody wanted the conflict resolved.

“This is not good for the university so I’m going to leave and come back in an hour,” he told them. “If you’re not done, we’re going to have a couple of new department chairs.”

Lou Hencken said the story was told at Eastern in the mid-1970s and might have been an urban legend, but it illustrated Moody’s approach to his job as vice president for academic affairs and provost.

Moody died Aug. 16 of a heart attack in Fayetteville, N.C. He was 91 years old. Moody will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery in November as a West Point graduate and World War II veteran.

Hencken, a former Eastern president and at the time working his way up through the housing department, said Moody ranks at or near the top of a long list of provosts at the school.

“He truly believed in the university and the students,” Hencken said. “He realized students would benefit from more options and by the time they graduated, it would be in their best interests. He was very student-oriented.”

Moody began the pass-fail option at the school not long after his first day on the job as the vice president for instruction on Oct. 1, 1967. A restructuring of the school’s administration in 1970 created the vice president for academic affairs and provost title he held until his resignation in 1976.

In 1969, Eastern News named Moody its Person of the Year. In the editorial, the newspaper said he had made “changes in the curriculum, which has helped the student as well as upgraded the university’s academic standards.”

Seven years later, when Moody sent school president Gordon Fite a letter of resignation, Eastern News asked why he didn’t address Faculty Senate and what his reasons were for resigning. Moody said it was neither Faculty Senate’s nor Eastern News’ business.

“He was a truly straight shooter,” Hencken said. “He was very honest. Through his hard work, he shaped the university in a positive way. People even today benefit because of the hard work he did when he was here.”

Moody came to Eastern after a 30-year military career that began at the ROTC senior course at Wofford University and ended upon his retirement from the Air Force in 1967 as Brigadier General. Included was a two-year stint as a combat pilot in the European theater of World War II.

Moody’s daughter, Judy McDermott, said his five children respected him a great deal, even though he didn’t openly ask for it.

“He commanded a great deal of respect without having to make much of an effort,” she said. “We knew his expectations of us and would not have thought of disappointing him.”

Moody married his first wife, Janet, in 1942.

They were married for 29 years until her death while they lived in Charleston in 1971. He married his second wife, Mary, in 1972 and the two remained married up until his death.

“He was an upstanding, moral person who believed in hard work and he had such integrity,” she said. “Behind his stern exterior, he had a very good heart.”

His military background shaped his style of leadership at Eastern.

“I always felt he looked upon Eastern as another base on which you serve,” said Glenn Williams, 82, who was the school’s vice president for student affairs from 1970 to 1992. “He understood, when you’re an officer in the service, you know what your area of responsibility is and you tend to it. He was a no-nonsense kind of guy.”

That no-nonsense probably followed him in death, McDermott said.

As for what he would say about a story about his death in the newspaper, Moody would have an answer for that.

“He would probably say it’s none of your business,” McDermott said with a laugh.

Marco Santana can be reached at 581-7943 or at masantana@eiu.edu.