Elizabeth Peer
| Elizabeth Peer | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Elizabeth Clow Peer February 3, 1936 East Orange, New Jersey |
| Died | May 26, 1984 (aged 48) New York City |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | Elizabeth Peer Jansson |
| Alma mater | Connecticut College |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Years active | 1958–1984 |
| Employer | Newsweek |
| Spouse(s) | John P. Jansson (married 1978–84) |
Elizabeth Peer Jansson (February 3, 1936 – May 26, 1984), born Elizabeth Clow Peer, often just Liz Peer, was a pioneering American journalist. She was the first female foreign correspondent at Newsweek and later its first female war correspondent. Peer worked for Newsweek from 1958 until her death in 1984.
Peer was born in East Orange, New Jersey on February 3, 1936 to Dr. Lyndon A. Peer and Ruth Banghart Peer. Both her parents were college graduates. Lyndon, a graduate of Cornell University, was a plastic surgeon who established the department of plastic surgery at St. Barnabas Hospital in Newark, New Jersey. Ruth graduated from Wells College. They married on December 16, 1929.
Elizabeth attended the Connecticut College for Women, graduating in 1957. Peer majored in philosophy and showed a strong interest in the arts. She started out as a reporter for the student newspaper, the Connecticut College News (whose faculty advisor was a young Paul Fussell), before shifting to become its cartoonist as a sophomore. Peer also served as art editor for the Quarterly, the college's literary magazine, in her sophomore year. Also in her sophomore year Peer began acting in plays and continued throughout her tenure at Connecticut. Peer's performance as one of the two schoolteachers in Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour made an impression on William Meredith, then on the English faculty:
Miss Peer's final scene showed great sensitivity, and throughout the play she used her fine voice with tact and intelligence.
At the end of her junior year Peer was elected president of the "Wig & Candle", the student theater group. Peer recalled later that she "never meant to have a career", but after an inconclusive engagement with an unnamed man the spring of her senior year at Connecticut, she followed up on her experience at Connecticut by enrolling in the theater program at Columbia University. Her parents disapproved of her decision and declined to pay for the degree, and Peer dropped out from Columbia.
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