William “Bill” Strickland Peach was many things in his lifetime: family man, business person, school board member, author, actor and political advocate. But what lies beneath all he did in life was his role as a deep thinker. A philosopher in an age when there are fewer and fewer who look beneath the surface, he was what one of his friends called “the voice of reason.”
Bill Peach passed away on December 14, 2023 at the age of 87.
“Franklin, Williamson County, and Tennessee could ill afford to lose such a fellow,” noted Dean Baxter on Facebook. “…[P]olitics to him was about ideas, not about personalities. Bill represented what citizenship and government should be about. Regardless of your persuasion, I hope you’ll…head his call for civil dialogue.”
Known for many years as “Main Street’s Philosopher,” Peach was the owner of Pigg and Peach, a menswear shop located in downtown Franklin for 53 years, and founded in 1949.
“Bill was a long-standing member of the Williamson County-Franklin Chamber of Commerce and even served on leadership positions within the chamber,” said Matt Largen, President and CEO, Williamson, Inc. “As a small business owner himself, he was a steadfast champion of small business and understood the importance of supporting independent retailers throughout Williamson County. He did so much for our community and made a point to work to make Williamson County a better place for small business.”
He was not only a business owner, but he was an active citizen in the community. A member of the Franklin Rotary Club and former president of the Jaycees, he was also president of the Downtown Franklin Association, served on the Franklin Housing Authority for 35 years, spent 16 years on the Board for Franklin Special School District (FSSD), and eight years on the Williamson County Board of Education.
“Bill Peach served on the FSSD School Board from 1976 until 1992, during a time of significant district growth that resulted in the construction of multiple school buildings,” said FSSD Director of Schools David Snowden, Ph.D. “Though I never worked with Mr. Peach directly, it was always a pleasure when we had opportunities to visit and discuss his insight related to educational issues.”
He ran for state office twice with education as his platform. According to one friend, he ran for state legislature once because he didn’t think anyone should run unopposed.
“Daddy Bill was a fierce advocate for public education,” said Ellen Clayton on Facebook. “Even after his time serving on the school board, he stayed up to date on all the issues they were discussing — every visit he would engage me about the things he had been following. He stayed involved until his very last breath….”
An author of six books, Peach strongly believed in the arts, especially the written word. He helped found Pull Tight Players, Middle Tennessee Author’s Circle, and Socrates Café, a philosophy discussion group that met at Meridee’s in the 2010s.
“Bill was a very integral part of the organization back in 1968 when Pull-Tight was founded,” said Peggy Macpherson, Historian for Pull-Tight Players. “He was in our very first production, “Our Town,” in 1968. He…was also in the cast of “The Girls in 509” which was my second participation in a play around 1975.”
Peach wrote two plays for Pull-Tight, a one act play called “To Think as a Pawn” which Pull-Tight presented around 1973 or 1974, and a follow-up many years later. The first was about the conflict between a father and son about war, the Vietnam War, as Macpherson remembers. Several years later he wrote a second play about that same son and his daughter, who portrayed a similar argument about possibly the Iraq war.
“It was an interesting generational conflict,” added Macpherson, “but Pull-Tight did not perform that second play, and I don’t remember the title.”
A mentor to young writers, this includes Gina Carrillio. Inspired by Peach’s words of wisdom she wrote a poem, “Down the Hall,” which she shared in his memory on Facebook.
Down the Hall in the library
On the shelves are books with pages
That include words
That create ideas
That need to be inside your head
There are words that play in my mind
All the time
They are yearning to get out
Sometimes they try to shout
If I don’t write them down
They may fade away
To only reappear another day
I don’t want to lose them
I’ve lost too many already
At times they come out too fast
I can’t keep this pen steady
I may not be quite ready
But a creative mind keeps swirling
Wonderful words whimsically whirling
But more importantly
There are ideas inside your head
That can become words on a page
In a book on a shelf
In the library down the Hall
“He was a big presence in downtown Franklin,” wrote Kathy Rhodes of Landmark Books of Peach in 2009 on a blog, “he is a big presence in the literary community, and he’s a big presence to all who know and love and respect him.”
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