Good day, Mark…
My name is Mark Peet and have been born and raised in the hands on way of living life. My early years were shaped by the honest and challenging life of the small farm. This opened my eyes to the reality of life and death and the ever changing balances in life’s ever intertwining circles. When markets crashed and things got tight, life morphed. My father reverted back to his other hands on trade before my birth, carpentry. So from there on my life was influenced by wood. My older brothers became carpenters. I followed higher education and acquired a few equivalent degrees from Penn State. Shortly after graduation, I took up employment with Pennsylvania’s DCNR for a brief stint and then moved into a roll with the USDA Forest Service. Marriage and children moved my employment to change. To be closer to home I joined employment with several different landscape companies. I’ve since settled into a school bus driving position and perform consulting on forest and ornamental stock on the side. I still work part time for a landscape firm as a senior crew leader with a focus on training summer recruits.
My hobbies include participating in sport activities, aiding 4-H activities, supporting The American Chestnut Foundation, being a chair on the Greene Dreher Alumni Association’s scholarship committee, being a volunteer firefighter with Greene-Dreher Vol. Fire Assoc. and teaching boy & girl scouts environmental education classes. And like many of you, am pulled to assist many more activities than time to list.
Where do I see the IWCS? Great question, I see crossroads, and not just one set of them but several sets. We need to reintroduce our organization to youth and educational facilities across our area as well as the areas of our whole organization. As a trustee, I will not be able to actively participate in as many ways as I would like because I put priorities as God first, family second and work in that order. What will I do? I will try to be available to our local regional members and represent them to the best of my abilities as well as get in touch with others in our organization. I expect our regional members to step up and assist me assisting them by providing information about activities throughout our vast area that could benefit our members. I hope to be able to send out mass e-mails and letters if need be to inform our members of these events. I hope to be able to staff an information booth at some of these events to bolster membership. I would love to meet up with others at some of these events to simply share in the experience.
UPDATE Mark was added as an Associate Editor for World of Wood in August of 2016. After serving 1 term as Trustee for the Northeast USA region, he served a second term which ended in 2021.