November 16, 2001

Peter L. Freund: The Amateur Astronomer

Peter L. Freund was a firefighter and a stargazer.

He built an observatory, a 10-by-10-foot wooden cube, in his backyard in
Westtown, N.Y., and would look at the stars through a telescope mounted on a piece of sewer pipe. In the summer his wife, Robin, would often join him.

"But there were some winter nights when I'd sit inside with my woolens on," Mrs. Freund said, laughing. "I'd say, 'Take a picture of it, show me later.' "

When her husband wanted to see a major eclipse, she was worried, though: one of the trees in the yard was directly in front of the eclipse. "I thought I was going to lose a pine tree," she said. But Mr. Freund spared it.

Mr. Freund, 45, a lieutenant with Engine Company 55 in Little Italy, "always followed his own interests," said Arne Francis, a high school classmate. He recalled that Mr. Freund took up windsurfing in the early 1980's before it was popular. He would vanish for hours at a time, Mr. Francis said.

"I'd go, 'Pete, where the hell were you?' He'd say, 'I was out by Buoy 20.'
And I'd say, 'Pete, there are ocean liners and tankers that go by there. Be
careful,' " Mr. Francis said. "What he was into, he just put his whole soul
into."

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