Here’s a scan of the obituary that appeared in The Washington Star (scroll down for the text if you have trouble reading the scan):
The Washington Star
Sunday, August 14, 1977
Page G-6
Francis C. Peters Dies; Artist and Developer
Francis C. Peters, 74, a real estate broker and artist, died Friday at Carriage Hill Nursing Home in Bethesda, after a stroke. He lived on Glenbrook Road in Bethesda.
At the time of his death, Peters was president of Peters & Duncan Associates, a Bethesda real estate firm that he and his son-in-law, John Duncan, formed in 1970.
A landscape artist of the impressionist school, Peters worked mostly in oils but also employed watercolors. In March the Washington Landscape Club awarded him first prize in oils for a seascape.
A native of Dunkirk, NY, Peters studied art at the Albright School of Art in Buffalo in 1919 and was associated with the Art Students League in New York City in the early 1920s.
Shortly afterwards he was art director of the Lennen-Mitchell Advertising Agency in New York City. From 1925 to 1929, Peters was advertising manager of the Buffalo Athletic Club.
Peters was assistant advertising manager and sales representative in Chicago for the William A. Rogers Silverware Co. in the early 1930s. He returned to Buffalo in 1934 and was a partner there in the securities firm of Bellinger and Co. until he came to the Washington area in 1941.
That year Peters joined the Industry Advisory Committees of the War Production Board and by 1943 had become deputy director of the Industry Advisory Committees.
He was a real estate broker with the Realistings Corp. here from 1947 to 1950.
In 1950 Peters founded a real estate business, Peters & Co., which was instrumental in the development of Claremont Shopping Center in Shirlington, Lyon Village Shopping Center on Lee Highway, and Oxon Hill Shopping Center. He left the company in 1970.
During the Korean War, Peters worked part-time for the federal government as a supervisor of the allocation of industrial materials to the government.
Peters’ paintings were exhibited locally and in New York and New Jersey. Among his one-man shows were exhibits at the Arts Club of Washington — where he held one-man shows about half a dozen times over a period of 15 years — and at the Rehobeth Gallery of Art.
He won the New Jersey state award at the Arts Club of Washington for an oil painting of a harbor scene in 1957 and 10 years later was awarded the Bachrach best in show award, also at the Arts Club of Washington.
Peters was on the advisory board of the American Artists Professional League in the early 1950s. From 1955 to 1971 he was president of the American Art League here, which he founded, and was a member of the Washington Landscape Club. He also belonged to the Citizens Commission for Preservation of Historic Buildings here.
He leaves his wife, Bertha D.; two children, Rex, of Gaithersburg, and Carol Ann Duncan of Potomac, and nine grandchildren.
Services are to be Tuesday at 11 a.m. at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, 6001 Western Ave. NW, with burial in Gate of Heaven Cemetery.
The family suggests that expressions of sympathy be in the form of contributions to Landon School, 6101 Wilson Lane, Bethesda.