Elizabeth Caspers Peters

March 1, 1926 - February 13, 2019

Elizabeth Caspers Peters, family matriarch, mentor and friend to many, and a formidable fundraiser for non-profit organizations, died peacefully on February 13 in her San Francisco home at the age of 92. Born in Pasadena in 1926, Betty attended Polytechnic and Westridge schools. After moving to Northern California in 1941, she attended Castilleja School and enrolled at Stanford University at age 16.

After college, she worked five years in the advertising business for J. Walter Thompson, where she met and married the delightful Evan Peters. They lived in San Francisco and had 3 children.

Born into an early Southern California savings and loan family, she took her family’s company public in 1959 at the peak of S

& L public offerings. She was 33 years old. There were not many women in the boardrooms of publicly traded companies in 1959, but with her father having died in 1958, Betty became an active Director of Wesco Financial Corporation for the next 50 years.

In 1973, she took a phone call in her kitchen that would change her life. It was from the then littleknown Warren Buffett of Omaha, who had an interest in purchasing Wesco. They met and became friends and business partners. With Betty’s permission as key shareholder, Buffett and his partner, Charlie Munger, acquired 80 percent of Wesco’s stock for Berkshire Hathaway. In 2012, again with Betty’s full support, Berkshire acquired 100 percent of Wesco. Betty’s personal friendship and business relationship with Buffett and Munger remained a source of great strength and pleasure for the rest of her life.

Her philanthropy and prodigious fund-raising skills focused on California Pacific Medical Center where she chaired its Foundation Board. While doggedly seeking funds to support improvements in medical care, Betty would joke that she could clear a room of potential donors just by crossing the threshold.

Her fundraising efforts were also significant at the San Francisco Symphony Association where she was a Life Governor, and at Stanford University where she served on the Alumni Board.

Betty spent half her week on the family ranch, affectionately known as “The Farm,” in St. Helena where she raised cows and grew five acres of cabernet, as well as vegetables, fruits, and roses. The Farm was also a place where she spent special time with her children and grandchildren, teaching them the value of working with a hoe or a trowel.

Her garden was her refuge. She enjoyed an over-abundance of fruits and vegetables, picking and distributing many, many baskets of tomatoes, squash, peaches, and nectarines, which she happily shared with friends.

Betty had a lifetime love of the beach and the ocean, dating back to her childhood days on the Pacific in Carpinteria. From her parents, Doris and Rudie, she inherited a love of music, as well as a love of the racetrack. She always bet $2 on the nose, and always played a $5 exacta. Sees Candy was a staple in the household, much to the delight of her many visitors.

Betty was an enthusiastic and lifelong Democrat, rooted in her time in the Pasadena public library reading The Grapes of Wrath and other stories about the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. She and her husband, Evan, were voracious consumers of news, always clipping out articles to share with friends and family.

Evan died in 1987 at the age of 85. She is survived by their beloved children, Lisa Peters (Barbara Carlson), Margaret Charnas (Charles), and Alec Peters (Ann), and grandchildren Ross Peters (Pearl), Gus Peters (Katya), Elizabeth Peters, Nate Charnas (Shruti) and Juliet Charnas.

At Betty’s request, there will be no memorial service. A celebration of her life will take place at a later date.

The family suggests memorials to OLE Health Foundation, 1100 Trancas St., Suite 300, Napa CA, 94558; Planned Parenthood Northern California; Friends of the San Francisco Library, or Ploughshares Fund.