Obituary
In the care of Solemn OaksPeter Drayton, 64, of Fremont, died Monday, August 24, 2026, at home, having spent thirty years moving Gerber's baby food out of Fremont and into the world, and nearly as many summers crouched behind home plate in the beer-league softball games he refused, knees and all, to age out of.
He was born March 3, 1962, in Fremont, a Gerber town, and went to work at the plant like a lot of Fremont did, on the logistics side, where he spent thirty years making sure that what the line packed actually got where it was going. He was good at the kind of work nobody notices until it fails — routes and loads and schedules and the thousand small saves that keep a truck from leaving empty or a store from going short. He took quiet pride in a shipping dock that ran clean, and in the fact that, somewhere, a parent he would never meet had food for the baby because Pete Drayton had done his job right.
His real season, though, was summer, and his real position was catcher. He had caught since Little League and never stopped, squatting behind the plate for the same beer-league team for so long that he had come to catch the sons of men he had once caught alongside. His knees filed formal complaints for the last fifteen years of it, which he ignored. He was the loud, steady heart of the diamond — the one who settled the young pitchers, argued the calls, and brought the cooler. He played his last full season at sixty-three and was talking, this spring, about one more.
Off the field he was easy company and hard to rattle, a man who would help you move, jump your car, or sit with you on a bad night without needing you to explain. He grilled for the whole neighborhood on the Fourth, coached his kids and then other people's kids, and kept a garage that was equal parts workshop, clubhouse, and lost-and-found. He loved his wife plainly, his teams fiercely, and the Tigers against all available evidence.
He went fast, at home, with the season still on. His team plans to retire his gear. There is no one, they agree, to give it to.
He is survived by his wife of thirty-eight years, Lori; his children, Trevor (Meg) Drayton of Fremont and Cassie (Ben) Holt of Grand Rapids; four grandchildren he coached the moment they could hold a bat; his brother, Scott (Jane) Drayton of Grand Rapids; and a dugout full of men who will not soon fill his spot.
He was preceded in death by his parents, Donald and Marge Drayton; and his teammate and best friend of forty years, Randy Kowalczyk, who caught the other half of those summers from the pitcher's mound.