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Emails to: nelevonkiel@yahoo.com

Pete is pictured here with two good friends in Africa. Pete was born into an Army family.  Both grandfathers were army officers. His uncle and father graduated from West Point, two other uncles saw combat in WWII as officers and an aunt served as a WAC captain. After years travelling from post to post as an "army brat," Pete also attended West Point and graduated in 1969.

He saw combat duty in Vietnam with the 173rd Airborne Brigade and served as an 8" SP battery commander in XVIII Airborne Corps at Ft. Bragg, NC. At Bragg he also spent a year with the JFK Center for Military Assistance.

He resigned his army commission in 1974 to go sailing with his wife Camilla and oldest child Kelcey. Kelcey was only 11 days old when she spent her first night onboard their boat.

From 1975 through 1979 he worked for Ford Motor Company in a variety of positions based in Jacksonville, FL and Oakland, CA.

He purchased his first automobile dealership in 1980 in Seattle, WA. From 1980 to 2007 he owned and operated or managed automobile businesses primarily based in the Pacific Northwest. He sold his last dealership in January of 2006.

He and his wife Camilla have three children, Kelcey, Lisa and Peter of whom they are very proud.

Here are some tidbits from his life that have to do with the creation of Jake Driver.

Pete is probably the only West Point cadet to ever have owned and sailed his own cruising boat on the Hudson River while still a cadet.  In the spring of 1969, when many of his classmates bought Mustangs and Corvettes, Pete bought a little ocean going British built twin-keeled sloop called an Alacrity.  It was the first in a long line of boats he and Camilla have owned and sailed. He even sailed it to Bimini and back just before going to Vietnam. The highlight of Pete's sailing career was a transatlantic sail he made aboard his good friend Graham Kerr's boat. He and Camilla now spend part of each year cruising aboard their CT 47 Ketch, Nele Von Kiel.

He began his martial arts training in high school at the Pentagon Athletic Club, studying Tae Kwon Do as part of Jhoon Rhee's Washington based organization.  At West Point he continued training and teaching Tae Kwon Do. He competed at the black belt level intercollegiately against Brown, NYU, Boston College, Cornell, Rutgers and other college teams under Grandmaster Duk Son Sung's New York City organization (later the World Tae Kwon Do Association).  

He and Camilla are founding officers of the US non-profit organization, the Lion Foundation, which seeks to protect and preserve wild animals and habitat.  Much of their efforts are channeled through an organization called Enkosini Eco Experience their daughter Kelcey runs which supports the efforts of fifteen individual conservation projects scattered throughout South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. (go to Philanthropy link)