Peter J. Van Well

Rotary and orchards share Pete's heritage, being the grandson of Rotarian Peter Van Well who started Van Well Nursery in 1946. His father, Jack, served as Douglas County Commissioner for several terms, in addition to continuing the family's nursery business.

Pete was born in 1964 at Wenatchee and attended the Eastmont schools. Pete's class was the first class to go all three years to the new Eastmont High School.

In 1983, Pete transferred from WSU to the University of Washington where he received a BA in communications in 1986.

"During my last quarter of college I worked as an intern for The Wenatchee World during the 1986 Legislative Session. After my internship, I worked as a fill-in writer at the World for seven months."

After that Pete worked as a reporter and then editor of Fishing and Hunting News in Seattle. All of the reporting, writing and production for the eight regional editions of the weekly tabloid, which ranged from Alaska to Texas, was done in Seattle.

After five years at F&H News, Pete was accepted in the Mosters Program at the UW Business School, earning an MBA in 1993, with the goal of returning to the family business in Wenatchee.

"A week before finals at the UW, I was introduced to Carmen Louise Connelly. Despite cutting one date and canceling another to go to an end-of-the-year party with friends, I managed to convince her to keep dating me. For two years, one dating and the other being engaged, we carried on a long-distance romance between Bellevue and Wenatchee."

Pete and Carmen were married June 17, 1995 and live in a cozy house on Crawford Street. Their first child, Jack Van Well, was born in 1997 and their second child, Grace was born eighteen months later.

"Jay Roeter sponsored my membership and I have tried to live up to the high standards that Jay has set, but Jay has one more year of perfect attendance than I do."

Pete was pleased to be elected to the club's Board of Directors where he has worked with the operations committees. He observes that few Rotarians know how hard these committees work to make the club run smoothly.

"My two proudest moments in Rotary are when I received a Paul Scea Fellowship from the club for my work on The Wenatchee World/Wenatchee Business Journal tabloid insert celebrating Wenatchee Rotary's 75th Anniversary and 'setting up' for the Railroad auction and having so many Rotarians come out to work that at times we didn't have enough for everyone to do."

Pete finds some time between Rotary projects and responsibilities to work in sales, marketing and business analysis at Van Well Nursery. He is also a Director of two industry groups:

• XXXWashington State Nursery and Landscape Association
• XXXWashington Apple Education Foundation.

Pete and Carmen are members of Holy Apostles Catholic Church.

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