Funeral Arrangements
Service: Friday, April 13, 11 a.m. at Truro Church, 10520 Main Street, Fairfax. Reception to follow.
Interment: Friday, April 13, noon, City of Fairfax Cemetery, 10567 Main Street.
John Earle Petersen, 71, a former councilmember for the City of Fairfax and leading authority in the field of public finance, died April 4 of a heart attack at his home in the City of Fairfax. The city has lowered its flags to half-staff in his honor.
At the time of his death, Petersen was a Professor of Public Policy and Finance at the George Mason School of Public Policy as well as a public member of Board of Directors of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board.
Petersen spent more than 50 years in the field of public finance. Upon graduating from Northwestern University with a B.A. in Economics in 1962, he was awarded a scholarship to study Public Finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, where he earned his Ph.D. He came to Washington, D.C. in 1966 to work in the Capital Markets Division of the Federal Reserve Board.
At the time he came to join the Fed, Petersen and his wife, Mary, bought a cottage in Fairfax City behind the home of his wife’s grandmother, the matriarch of a family with deep roots in Virginia history and Democratic politics.
In 1972, Petersen was elected to the Fairfax City Council on the "Livable City" platform, which emphasized environmental concerns over unrestricted development.
After serving a term as City Councilman, Petersen stayed active in civic organizations for the rest of his life, serving as a long-time member of the City’s Economic Development Authority, on the City Charter Commission, on the board of the Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission and also on the Board of Historic Fairfax City, Inc. This deep involvement in his own community and its governance helped further inform Petersen’s study of and later teaching of topics in public finance.
Petersen joined the faculty of the George Mason School of Public Policy in 2002. He delighted in sharing his vast knowledge in the field of public finance with graduate students. Petersen was also a regular columnist for more than twenty years for "Governing" magazine. In 2009, he received a Fulbright distinguished lectureship and spent a semester teaching at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.
In October 2011 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management (ABFM) recognizing his accomplishments in the field.
Survivors include his wife of 49 years, Mary Stuyvesant Petersen of Fairfax City; daughter Mary LeGrand Asel of Falls Church; son, Virginia Senator John Chapman Petersen of Fairfax City, and daughter Elizabeth Schuyler Morgan of Alexandria. He is also survived by a brother and eight grandchildren.