John Pedersen (arms Designer) - Personal Life and Family

Personal Life and Family

Pedersen was born in Grand Island, Nebraska, the third of four children of Danish immigrants John H. and Matilda Christine Pedersen. The Pedersen family were ranchers and lived in several western states; they had a family ranch near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where John Douglas lived after his parents died. Pedersen's education is unknown, according to family records, but it is known he traveled extensively.

On March 28, 1918 (or possibly 1920) Pederson married Reata Canady in Provo, Utah. Canady was born in Greenville, Texas, and her father, a Scot named Loren Canady, was a railroad engineer sent to China, where he worked building a railroad. Canady accompanied him while her mother remained in the San Francisco Bay area. One day he went "down the line" to deliver a payroll to a railroad crew, and was never heard from again, leaving his now-semi-orphaned daughter to make her way home. She became a violinist protégé of Sir Thomas Lipton, who helped her attend nursing school and becoming an RN at Victoria Hospital, London. According to family legend, Reata was a nurse during World War I, working in a field hospital inside a bombed-out church in Belgium when a German shell hit. She was assisting in a surgery on a wounded soldier, and threw herself over him to keep debris out of his wounds. According to the story, they had to be pulled from the rubble, the soldier survived, and Reata received a decoration from the British government. This event brought her to the attention of an American magazine illustrator, possibly P.G. Morgan, who did 100 oil paintings for the Red Cross of her as a nurse, at night in a field hospital, using a small flashlight to read a patient's thermometer. The painting was supposedly made into the cover illustration of one of the era's magazines. Though there is no documentation known to exist of this tale so far, the actual oil painting does exist, and currently has a place of honor in her granddaughter's home in Waldorf, Maryland. At some point during the war Reata produced short stories and magazine articles under the pen name Reata Van Houten; this much is documented. Her stories include Honor Among Thieves, All-Story Weekly (1917); Fiddler Joe, All-Story Weekly (1919); The Seven Sleeper, All-Story Weekly (1919); and Comrades of the Trail, and Munsey’s (1927). During the 1930s, she wrote articles for Field & Stream and similar magazines on topics like fly fishing. She also became a radio personality, and had her own show on an NBC affiliate, where she was known as "The Hostess of the Air."

The Pedersens had two children, Eric and Kristi-Ray. They traveled widely, he usually on business related to his gun designing, although their "base" was the family ranch in Jackson Hole. In the early 1920s, when Eric was about 4 and Krist-Ray was about 3, they moved to England for several years, while John Douglas did some work for the Vickers company. Prior to her retirement, Reata worked as a nurse at a Goodwill Industries facility in San Diego. At some unknown point, they were divorced.

At the time of his death at age 70, Pedersen lived in Blandford, Massachusetts, a suburb of Springfield, home of the Springfield Armory and the Springfield rifle. It is not known if his residence there had any connection to the armory. Typically, though, Pedersen was traveling when he died, of a coronary, while in Cottonwood, Yavapai County, Arizona, near Prescott, where the Pedersens had lived for a time earlier in their lives. Reata Pedersen died in 1969 in San Diego, age 85. In 1946 Pedersen married Christine J. Loomis Bond, a widow, who was superintendent of nursing at a hospital where Pedersen may have been a patient receiving treatment for tuberculosis. At the time of his marriage, he was 65; his new wife was 33 years old. The marriage took place in Concord, New Hampshire.

At the start of the Korean War, his son Eric Pedersen joined the United States Marine Corps and served as a lieutenant in combat in Korea. He is memorialized in the book Reckless: Pride of the Marines. Lt. Pedersen led a recoilless rifle platoon and at his own expense purchased a racehorse for use as an ammunition carrier. The horse became famous in the 1st Marine Division. Reckless became the first horse to participate in an Marine amphibious landing, was promoted through the ranks from private to corporal to sergeant, and at the war's end was shipped to Camp Pendleton, California, where she lived out her retirement as a beloved mascot.