Pete Pfendler

 

Peter Pfendler

Peter G. Pfendler ’73 of Petaluma, Calif., died June 17, 2007. He founded Polaris Aircraft Leasing Corp. in San Francisco in 1974. The company was for a time the world’s largest commercial aircraft leasing company before it was sold to General Electric Credit Corp. in 1989. Pfendler later moved to a cattle ranch on Sonoma Mountain and devoted his time to wildlife conservation. He served as a director of the National Academy of Sciences, the California Nature Conservancy and the Peregrine Fund. From 1966 to 1970, he served as a U.S. Air Force pilot, flying 139 combat missions in Vietnam. He attained the rank of captain and received 16 combat medals, including the Distinguished Flying Cross.

http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/bulletin/2008/winter/memoriam.php

Kimberly Pfendler left Hollywood behind in 2004 to marry Peter Pfendler, a former Air Force pilot and airline executive who had moved to a 1,000-acre Sonoma Mountain cattle ranch east of Petaluma where he also planted grapes, mostly bordeaux varietals, which struggled at times to ripen in the cool climate.

Peter Pfendler died in 2007 at the age of 63. Having earned degrees from UCLA and Harvard Law School, he had made his money founding Polaris Aircraft Leasing Corp. in San Francisco in the 1970s, at the time the world's largest commercial aircraft leasing company. He sold it to General Electric Credit Corp. in 1989, a few years after moving to Sonoma County.

His time here was not without its controversies. As a Press Democrat obituary read, Pfendler was scorned by some for his 10-year battle against opening Lafferty Ranch near Petaluma to the public, and hailed by others for his philanthropy and environmentalism.

Lafferty Ranch is a 269-acre tract near the top of Sonoma Mountain owned by the city of Petaluma. In 1992, the city decided against selling the property to Pfendler, who had made a bid to buy it.

That's around the same time Pfendler, with winemaker Don Baumhefner, began planting the first wine grapes on Pfendler Ranch, including a 6-acre pinot noir vineyard along its lower slopes near Copeland Creek. The two made wines under that name until 2005.

After her husband's death, Kimberly Pfendler, who is also raising the couple's young son, now 5...

http://www.petaluma360.com/article/20100209/COMMUNITY/100209473?p=1&tc=pg
 – excerpted – from writing on his widow and the Pfendler Vineyards

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