Peter B. Greenough, 89, Was Financial Columnist and Editor

By PHYLLIS MERAS

Peter Bulkeley Greenough, former financial columnist for the Boston Globe and former business editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio, died last week in New York city after a long illness. Mr. Greenough, a lifetime seasonal resident at West Chop and later Makonikey, was the husband of opera singer Beverly Sills. He was 89.

Mr. Greenough's grandfather, Charles Pelham Greenough of Brookline, first came to the Vineyard on a duck hunting trip to Tisbury Great Pond in 1882 and, enamored of what he found, eight years later built one of the first two privately owned houses on the West Chop bluff. In 1912, in the days when one could still see sailing vessels from all parts of the world passing through Vineyard Sound, his son, Henry Vose Greenough, bought a weathered shingled house by the beach near West Chop's Big Pier where side wheelers once docked. It was there that Peter Greenough spent childhood and young manhood summers.

He enjoyed family Sunday afternoon parties with a multitude of cousins on the big porch. Not infrequently, fresh corn brought over from the gentleman's farm his father had in Carlisle outside Boston was served, driven down from the farm to Woods Hole, along with other fresh produce and then brought directly to the Big Pier by boat. He fished for striped bass and bluefish with his father and played tennis at the West Chop tennis courts. Halfway across the Sound, on his trips to the Island, Peter Greenough would happily sniff the air and exclaim that he could begin to smell the sea smells of the Vineyard he so loved.

For some time after his 1956 marriage to Miss Sills, they and their children continued to summer at the spacious family "cottage" at West Chop, but in the 1970s they began to dream of having a smaller house of their own. They chose Makonikey for the site and designed it themselves. Although the first house they built was destroyed by an arsonist, they wasted no time in rebuilding - constructing a house that they hoped would one day be their retirement home. Early each morning during their summer stays, Mr. Greenough would be off for a swim, returning to wake his wife so they could have coffee together watching the sun-dappled Sound.

Ideally, as the day progressed, there would be a fishing expedition in prospect for Mr. Greenough. Such trips might be in his own little stinkpot, as his wife called it, or on Roland Authier's Edgartown party boat. Or he would go fishing in his Makonikey neighbor, Roger Feldman's boat, or with other neighbors, Polly and Dick Kaltenbach. When bluefish were the product of the fishing ventures, he would proudly smoke them and create a bluefish paté that friends and family found could not be surpassed. Fine cooking was one of his pastimes and he had studied at Dionne Lucas's TAG Cordon Bleu cooking school. Annually, he would also participate in the Martha's Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby and encouraged his daughter, Muffy, to enter it, too.

Mr. Greenough's winters were largely spent in New York where his wife was singing and, later, serving as general manager of the New York City Opera and president of its board. Miss Sills always credited her husband with keeping her singing at times when she felt she must give it up.

In the 1950s, when the Greenoughs realized that their son, Bucky, was severely retarded and knew that their daughter was deaf, Beverly Sills was ready to abandon her singing career for her children.

"But what finally got me back," she told a Gazette reporter in 1977, "was Peter. We were living in Boston at the time and he gave me 52 round-trip tickets on the Boston-New York shuttle, so I started to study again." Mr. Greenough also retired from his Boston Globe job in the 1960s to be able to spend more time at home.

As a journalist, he was admired for the cleverness of his writing and his ability to make complex business matters understandable. "Monetary reform and New England weather have much in common," he wrote in a memorable 1965 column. "If you don't like the one plan, wait a bit. Another one will come along shortly."

Peter Greenough was born in Brookline on Feb. 6, 1917, a son of Henry Vose Greenough and Emery Holden Greenough. He was a graduate of Milton Academy, Harvard University, 1939, and the Columbia School of Journalism, 1940. He served as a lieutenant in the Army Air Corps in Africa and Sicily in World War II. His first job as a journalist was with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, which his mother's father had bought in 1885. On his father's side, he was a descendant of the Mayflower passenger John Alden.

It was in Cleveland that he first saw Miss Sills, at one of her performances. As she recalls it, "He winked at me and that's how it started." She found herself, before long, quite enamored of the tall, handsome, blue-eyed blond with the booming voice, commanding presence and ready wit. During their 50-year marriage they were a virtually inseparable couple. On the Vineyard, they could frequently be seen at Sunday night art gallery openings and the annual Martha's Vineyard Hospital auction. They numbered among their friends William and Rose Styron, Art Buchwald and Mike Wallace and enjoyed entertaining small groups of such friends at Makonikey dinners that they would prepare themselves. But seven years ago, when Mr. Greenough first became ill, they were forced to abandon their plans for retirement on the Island and sell their Makonikey house.

Mr. Greenough is survived by his wife; four daughters, Lindley Thomasett of Bedford, N.Y., Nancy Bliss of Woodstock, N.Y., Diana Greenough of Lancaster, Mass., and Meredith (Muffy) Greenough of Manhattan; a son, Peter B. (Bucky) Greenough Jr. of Manhattan, and two grandchildren. He was predeceased by his sister, Barbara Greenough Bradley, and his brother, Henry Vose Greenough Jr.

Funeral services have been held. Donations in Mr. Greenough's memory may be made to the New York city chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, 733 Third avenue, Third Floor, New York, NY 10017.