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Brigadier General
Peter R. Moody
Permanent Professor 1958–1967
Vice Dean of the Faculty 1966–1967
A.B., Wofford College
B.S., United States Military Academy
M.A., Duke University
Ph.D., Cambridge University
Pete Moody, the Academy’s 3rd Permanent Professor, was born in 1917 in Dillon, South Carolina. He graduated from Wofford College, Spartanburg, SC, in 1937 and was pursuing a Master’s degree at Duke when prospects of war caused him to choose a military career. He entered the United States Military Academy in 1938 and graduated in 1942. During his first class year at West Point he taught English literature in place of faculty members who had left for combat. In 1944 he arrived in the European Theater as a fighter pilot with the 393rd Squadron. During the war he flew the P-38 and P-47 in 69 combat missions and earned a Distinguished Flying Cross and the French Croix de Guerre while rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel and becoming a Squadron Commander and Group Operations Officer. Operationally, he flew the first and last World War II missions for the 393rd Squadron. After the war he returned to West Point and taught English from 1946 to 1950. During this period, he completed his master’s thesis and the degree was awarded by Duke in 1947. Following a semester at the Army Language School, Monterey, CA, and another at Air War College, Maxwell AFB, AL, Pete was assigned to the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Paris, France, as the Deputy Chief of the Air Force Section, 1951–1954. In this assignment, he worked actively with the French Air Force and was awarded the wings of a brevet pilot, French Air Force. It was from this position that he received orders to become the Base Commander of Stewart AFB, NY. However, before he took command he was recruited to join the initial faculty cadre at the new Air Force Academy, where he became Professor of English in August 1954. In 1956 he was appointed Professor and Head of the Department of English with additional duties as Professor and Head of the Department of Foreign Languages and Chair of the Humanities Division. He was appointed a Permanent Professor in 1958. From 1961 to 1963, he was a student at Cambridge University in England, where he earned his PhD in English Literature in 1963. Returning to the Academy, he resumed his positions as Department Head and Division Chair. From 1966 to 1967 he was the Vice Dean of the Faculty. One of the towering figures of the initial academic leadership, Pete Moody was a driving factor in creation of academic majors in the Humanities and Military Arts and Sciences, as well as a central figure in nurturing the Graduate Scholarship Program. He retired in the grade of brigadier general in 1967.
Following his military service, Pete was the Vice President of Academic Affairs and later Provost at Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL, from 1967 to 1978. During his 11 years there he led the university’s growth from an enrollment of 5,000 to more than 10,000. In 1994 he was named to the university’s “Centennial 100,” an elite list of individuals who significantly contributed to the university in its nearly 100 years of existence. He died in 2008 at his home in Fayetteville, NC, at age 91, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.